Fastest Land Animals

So the other night we were watching the Olympics on TV, kind of. I mean the TV was on and tuned to the channel showing the Olympics, and we were all in the room at the same time. Is this actually watching TV though?

Anyway, the men's 100 meter event was being televised at the time. I think I've seen it since so I have no idea when it actually happened. So someone asked me what the speed would be in miles per hour. I am asked because for some reason I am supposed to either know this kind of stuff or be able to figure it out. On the other hand if the toilet needs fixing then it would be someone else who was asked. We all have our specialties you see.

But I can figure out stuff like miles per hour. I rounded the time off to 10 seconds for 100 meters. Hopefully Mr. Bolt will forgive me for rounding his 9.69 seconds to 10 but 10 is just a lot easier to work with when one has no calculator and when one has achieved 60 years. Often .31 seconds is not so terribly important unless a gold medal is at stake.

One hour is 60 minutes and one minute is 60 seconds; so, that means that one hour is 3600 seconds. Mr. Bolt ran for 10 seconds and traveled 100 meters. So if I multiply 10 seconds by 360 I would have an hour. I multiply the distance by 360 at the same time to keep everything equal and that gives me 36,000 meters. See why I chose to stay with 10 and 100?

Someone, during my calculating, said that it would be impossible for Mr. Bolt to keep that pace for an hour. While I agree that is likely true it doesn't really change the problem.

Okay, so how many miles is 36,000 meters? I had to do this rather laboriously in my head when I was in front of my audience. I only remember that one meter is about 39 inches. One mile is 1760 yards. So to get meters I have to multiply my 1760 by 3 inches. But I already know that 1760 yards multiplied by 3 is 5280. Because I know that 5280 feet is a mile. Ha ha - even crazy to me! So 5280 inches I divide my 36 inches per yard and I do it in my head just really fast and approximate and get 150 which I then subtract from my 1760 which gives me 1610. So basically for me in my head a mile is about 1610 meters. Then I have to divide 1610 into 36000 which is about 22.

But now that I am blogging, well, Google is my friend. Type into the Google search box "36000 m in miles" and touch enter and the answer reported almost immediately is "36 000 meters = 22.3693629 miles."

So Mr. Bolt, who had just set the world record for 100 meters, ran at a rate of 22.37 miles per hour. My answer, sans GOOG, was pretty close.

Then someone said well how does that compare with a horse?

I found this handy table thanks to GOOG (cool name Home Work Spot):
http://www.homeworkspot.com/ask/fastestanimals.htm

Fastest Land Animals

Animal Speed (miles per hour) Cheetah 70 Pronghorn Antelope 61 Wildebeest 50 Lion 50 Thomson's Gazelle 50 Quarterhorse 47.5 Elk 45 Cape Hunting Dog 45 Coyote 43 Gray Fox 42 Hyena 40 Zebra 40 Mongolian Wild Ass 40 Greyhound 39.35 Whippet 35.5 Rabbit (domestic) 35 Mule Deer 35 Jackal 35 Reindeer 32 Giraffe 32 White-Tailed Deer 30 Wart Hog 30 Grizzly Bear 30 Cat (domestic) 30 Human 27.89 Elephant 25 Black Mamba Snake 20 Six-Lined Race Runner 18 Wild Turkey 15 Squirrel 12 Pig (domestic) 11 Chicken 9 Spider (Tegenaria atrica) 1.17 Giant Tortoise 0.17 Three-Toed Sloth 0.15 Garden Snail 0.03

Horses are about twice as fast as Mr. Bolt and they are a whole lot faster than I am.

I was interested to note that the Grizzly Bear is considerably faster than Mr. Bolt as well. I already knew this but seeing the difference in numerical form is intriguing.

Made me think of the old joke about the two guys in the woods that meet the bear and one begins to run away and the other guy says "you can't outrun a bear" and the runner says "I don't have to outrun the bear, just you."

Another interesting thing is that chickens and pigs are slower than humans and yet if you've ever tried to catch either that is hard to believe.