I have seen some insects (cockroaches in particular spring to mind) covering considerable distances very quickly. If you measured distance covered in relation to their much tinier body-length, would these six-legged critters be faster than the fastest animal on four legs – the cheetah?
I don’t think speed alone is relative. Now speed/kg might be a measure you could use to make comparisons.
Hey, that is fascinating! Thanks!
Which is not surprising, considering the Square-Cube Law .
Same reason why ants can lift many times their own body weight.
Hmm. They seem to be counting the cheetah’s long tail in his body length (reducing his apparent proportional speed), but not counting the roach’s antennae? Tails are excluded from most body-length figures.
By my reckoning, a top-form adult cheetah is covering more than 24 tailless-body-lengths per second.
In general, speed doesn’t really scale much with size. On average, small critters and large critters have about the same absolute speed. So one would certainly expect that tiny things like insects would cover more body lengths per second.
Tiger beetles (Cicindela)are terrific runners and surely would beat roaches.
I remember seeing a tv show about this on pbs, something about if a human could jump like a flea, they could do a 60’ standing high jump.
No, if a human could jump like a flea, they could do a standing high jump of a meter or two. Just like fleas do, and just like humans do. Maximum jump height is another thing that doesn’t really scale with size.