THE SPEED OF ANIMALS

Dominion, Volume 14, Issue 251, 18 July 1921, Page 9

THE SPEED OF ANIMALS

SOME INTERESTING TESTS BY MOTOR-CAR. The speed attainable by running animals and birds in flight has seldom been seriously studied, mainly because of the difficulty of accurate measurement. Recently (says "Everyday Science”), naturalists have made attempts to measure animal speed by moans of the motorcar and of birds by the aeroplane. These experiments' wore carried out on the Uintah Desert in tho State of Utah, U.S.A., a flat tableland smooth enough for a car to follow ft running animal closely and time it by the speedometer and the stop-watch. The Uintah Desert probably furnishes as fine a testing-ground as any in tho world, for although it does not carry many species of antelope, the fastest of all runners, the best of which are to be found in Africa, this party got records of coyote, wolf, greyhound, two kinds of deer, and one kind of antelope. A coyote "put up” by the car, registered'4s miles nn hour for 2J miles, and then dropped to 30 miles an hour, at which speed it seemed able to go on for ever. ~ A prairie-wolf, in its first rush, did 38 mites an hour for 3 miles, then dropping to S 3 miles nn hour. Probably the bigger timber-wolf of the north is faster. The wolf’s distant domesticated cousin, tho greyhound, is considerably its superior in speed, however, for on the same ground it made 49 miles an hour. (It would be interesting to compare this to tho speed, if it hns ever been measured, of English coursing greyhounds.) All the deer proved 1 aster than either wolf or coyote over short distance?, put not over long. A mute deer did 47 mites an hour for a mile and a ouarter, and an elk 52 miles an hour for 3 miles, but the mule deer then dropped to 29 and the elk to 27 miles an hour. The antelope of that region made the car do its best to keep nace with it. Sixty-two miles an hour for the first 24 miles was recorded; nt the end of 4 miles the pace hod fallen to 48 mites an hour, and its long-dis-tance speed was 31 miles an hour. In the trials with an aeroplane the ;varfv did not manage to get such a diversitv of results. The best speeds recorded bv following birds was 4« miles »n hour for 10 miles done by the American eagle in a hurry, and 32 miles an hour indefinitelv; and 50 miles for 4 'miles bv a wild duck, but that was with a following wind, and should strictly te ruled out. Racing pigeons have been rimed In England to reach 55 miles an hour at a burst, and pheasants 45. and nigeons have maintained nn average of 35 miles an hour for considerable distances. which seems to bo about the highest long-distance speed recorded for '’lt’ s possible that, the speediest flying things are not birds, but. insects. Not much known about them, but bees hare beau proved tester than Mnnv veers ago a men was arranged with 1-. P »s' from a hire situated close to « nigeon-loft. They were released together 5 miles sway, and neorlr all the tees, their bodies powdered to make them recognisable, arrived home before the first of the pigeons.