PAST FISH

Shannon News, 20 April 1928, Page 2

PAST FISH

DUMB ANIMALS' SWIMMING SPEEDS.

Believe it or not, the barracuda can swim better than seventy miles an hour f while the hooked bill swamp crane cannot fly twenty miles an hour. Believe it or not, a kangaroo can swim and so can a giraffe. You ean use your own judgment about the following, too :—Rabbits, monkeys, pikes, or hawks cannot swim. All of the above information is but a small part of some freak swimming records recently published by Cealo Mohawk, of Santa Barbara, who is known as the human seal (says a writer in an American exchange). Mohawk has spent his life in and about water; he claims to have timed 3,000 seagoing animals in speed trials. He has classed in his interesting little pamphlet the flying speed of a great number of birds. According to this record the salt water canary is the fastest of all the inhabitants of «the air.. This bird's record is better than 100 miles an hour. Slow Motion

Just how and where Mohawk timed such animals in the water as the honey bee, cockroach, flea, grasshopper, anfl lightning bug would make another interesting talc These insects have been clocked, according to this booklet, at distances varying from sft. to 10ft. It takes a flea three minutes to swim 2ft, while a black ant will swim 10ft in two minutes and two seconds.

Prairie dogs ; ground squirrels, Japanese dancing mice, Indian mongoose or snake killer, skunks have all been duly tried in the water and their efforts recorded. It might be some consolation for the human race to know that the polecat ■wtak.es thirty-two seconds to swim 50ft. You don't have to be much of a swimmer to go as fast a 8 that. Man Wins Af riean lions, Indian elephants, American buffaloed, hyenas, rhinoceroses, porcupines, coyotes, and wild eats are a few of the wild animals Cealo Mohawk claims to have held the stop wateh on while they labored in the water. According to these records man has little to fear from wild animal life in tho water. The speediest of all the mammals, according to the author, is. the racoon, which swims 50yds. in forty-four seconds.