ANIMALS TIMED.

Pahiatua Herald, Volume XLII, Issue 12950, 15 May 1935, Page 2

ANIMALS TIMED.

SPEED OF BIROS AND FISH.

STREAMLINED “MODELS.” The means of progression employed by animals is obviously of the greatest .importance to our designers of air, road and water craft, and many of the engineers problems hove in the past yielded up their secrets as the result of careful inquiry as to the rates at which various animals travel and the methods which they employed to achieve their aims. While our latest forms of transport easily eclipse the speed records of any animals, many creatures are relatively much faster when size and weight is taken into consideration. A number of eminent authorities have in lecent years combined to compile tolerably accurate records of animal speeds, and some of the figures arrived at are deeidedlv illuminating, writes E. G. Boule'nger in The Observer. Stop-watches and anti-aircraft appliances have made it possible to “.time” animal speeds that were formerly purely matters for vague conjecture GREYHOUND DOES SIXTY.

It is generally agreed that the greyhound which is able to attain a speed of nearly 60 miles per hour, and the equally fast hunting leopard or cheetah of India and Africa, used since time immemorial for chasing such rapidly moving creatures as the gazelle, hare and jerboa rat, are the swiftest mamals. Mr David Pollock, Acting-District- Officer at Mbeya in Tanganyika Territory, has timed Thompson’s gazelle and ascertained that it could maintain a burst of 50 m.p.h. for a considerable time. He also found that the giraffe, buffalo and ostrich were winded after a comparatively short period of travel at 35 m.p.h. An elephant's normal gait is at 3.5 m.p.h., but when charging may do so at the rate of 20 m.p.h. IN THE AIR. Colonel Richard Meinertzliagen, the eminent ornithologist, is the greatest authority on the subject of the velocity of birds, and he has

compiled a table of volocity using anti-aircraft appliances for the purpose. Colonel Meinertzliagen calculated that birds, which up to a few decades ago had undisputed supremacy in the air, have two speeds— a normal for everydav purposes including migration, and an accelerated speed which is used for pursuit or evasion, in which case double the rate of the normal speed is obtained. He estimated that different bi?;ds were capable of the following speeds: Lammergeiers. 110 miles per hour; swallows 106, lapwings 80, ducks 09, geese 55. pelicans 51, starlings 48, storks 48, sand grouse 47. kestrels 43, partridges 40. rooks 40, ravens 39, crossbills 37. Pigeons 36, finches 33. pheasants 33, waxbills 30. If we take endurance into account the lapwing should probably be awarded the blue riband of the air. Marked lapwings liberated at Ullswater in Cumberland some years ago were shot in Canada little over twenty-four hours from the time that they had been liberated. These birds travelled with the wind, and averaged about 100 miles per hour. WATER RETARDS SPEED.

As will be readily appreciated, water offers a much more serious •opposition to xapid progress than does air, and it is amongst aquatic creatures, therefore, that we find that first essential to speed—the ■streamline form in its highest perfection.

The records of the rocks make it abundantly plain that life had its beginning in the waters, and that to the earliest animals, at least, the streamline was i nknown. Easily the speediest of aquatic creatures of our time are torpedo-shaped. With regard to the speed attained by fishes, Mr J . R . Norman, assistant keeper in the Department of Zoology in the Natural History Museum and an expert on the subject, thinks that the swordfish and its allies are the most rapid swimmers. In his book, “A History of Fishes,” he quotes Professor Owen, who was once called upon to testify in Court as to the power of the swordfish, as stating that “it strikes with the accumulated force of 15 double-headed hammers, and its velocity is equal to that of a swivelshot.*’ A SPEEDY FISH. Amongst the speediest, of fish must be the tunny, which covers

♦ such vast areas of ocean that its world wanderings are only now being accurately mapped at the cost of much investigation. According to Mr Norman, the average rate of progress of the pike has been estimated from 8 to 10 h.p.h., that of the salmon at 7 m.p.h., but these speeds may be greatly accelerated when they are attempting to escape an enemy. The whales alone among mammals appear to have followed in the path first blazoned by the swifter fiskes. The whales are believed to lAve evolved from a race of primitive land mammals that abandoned a terrestrial life in order to evade predacious foes and also to discover other and more abundant food supplies. As a result they adopted a semi-fish like form, discarding all structures which might offer hampering opposition to their adopted e ?ment. Their rate of progress may slightly exceed 2C knots per hour. DEPENDS OX THE BUILD. All streamline animals, indeed, have enormous advantage over the non-strea mli ne. Though the kangaroo and jerboa make astonishing leaps and appear literallv to drift over the ground like loose thistledown, their efforts soon succumb to those of the cheetah, horse, dog, or other animals which go “flat out,” placing head, neck, bodv and tail in one ’plane, and thus cleaving the air. If a hippopotamus could be magically endowed with the lightness of an antelope it would still fail to achieve speed records by reason of its make-up.