Forget cheetahs, peregrine falcons are the fastest animals on Earth

boing
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I bet if you gave the cheetah a hang glider, it could give the falcon a run(dive?) for its money.

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Fastest animal on Earth?

I’ll stick with the cheetah, since the falcon has to leave the Earth to be faster.

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Well, they haven’t really left earth, just the lithosphere…

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Thanks for unlocking a memory! Totally forgot about that book.

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i guess the game changes again if you measure fastness by times body length per second. No idea (or rather i forgot) who wins then.

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Don’t forget the swordfish and marlins though - faster than a cheetah, and in the water, no less!

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Most things quote tiny copepods as the fastest animals relative to their size, though that’s probably complicated by the way they move in quick jumps, and who knows what others were overlooked. It’s hard to find much definitive, but I found at least one book with some figures, including mentioning the fastest recorded escape responses are their larvae at 364 body lengths per second.

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We have a falconcam here in Jersey City too, fun show, should be starting soon. Folks in hi rises have seen pigeons hit outside their windows in a cloud of feathers.

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If this trips your trigger, you can explore this at length in a little tale called “Jonathan Livingston Seagull”, which I loved as a kid.

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Ah, Richard Bach.

I still need to read that; I absolutely loved Illusions.

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“Jonathan Livingston Seagull”? It’s not the 1970s anymore.

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