Inspired by this thread:
What animal (other than humans) is able to generate the most momentum, as in mass * velocity?
I mean, the swift is a damn fast bird, but it doesn’t weigh a lot. Elephants weigh a lot, but are pretty slow. Which animal could essentailly body check you hockey style and hit you with the most umph?
A blue whale can weigh as much as 150 tons and achieve bursts of 30mph. That would leave a mark.
For momentum, both m and v increase linearly: A creature of half the mass would have to travel twice as fast, which puts those blue whale statistics pretty much out of reach of anything else, unless there’s any 3 ton elephants who can run 1500 mph or birds which approach the speed of light. Kinetic energy might be different, given that it’s mv[sup]2[/sup].
Finagle pretty much nailed this one. The blue whale is the biggest thing that ever lived. No dinosaur ever came close. An Abrams tank weighs less than half what a blue whale does.
Teaching one to skate, however, would be a challenge.
Ice skate or roller rink? Big difference.
Seeing as the OP has been answered already what if you limited it to momentum on landand in the air? In other words you could count a sea lion but couldn’t use it’s velocity in the water in your calculation.
And it’s hard to get in any good practice, what with ice floating above water and all. You try doing a pirhouette while upside-down and see how you like it!
While it’s possible that a blue whale may be able to achieve more momentum, let’s not forget that it’s actually the sperm whale that has been documented as having achieved the most momentum:
I think the sheer magnitude of the whale’s lead in momentum can’t be emphasized enough. You’d practically have to drop a black rhino from orbit in order to get the same kind of momentum. Or at least, strap it into the back of a Mach 2 fighter.
For land based animals I figure the noble elephant would come out on top, wikipedia states they can reach up to 24 m.p.h. and the largest ever shot weighed in at an astonishing 26,400 pounds though I doubt that particular elephant would be able to reach speeds. Contenders for second place could include the wildebeest and lion, both of which weight up to 550lbs and reach speeds of up to 50 m.p.h. (I forget where I read that).
What about being hit by the tail of some of the largest sauropods? From what I’ve read, some of them may have actually come close to blue whale-sized.
But on that same note, a whale could do the same thing. It weighs more, and it may have a flowerpot at its disposal as well ;).
Among birds, didn’t there used to be eagles that ate the extinct moa by diving into them and knocking them down? And then when people killed all the moa they had to kill all the eagles too because people are too easy to kill like you kill a moa? I can’t find where I read that.
It should be noted that one actually hitting you might not be so bad. The force would be spread out along your whole body, wereas a Rhino dropped on you from orbit would basically shove all its mass onto your head. I really can’t do the calcs, honestly.
Also, blue whales create one hell of a bow wave. You probably could just lie there and float in front of it forever and a day, even sleeping a bit if you had the right reflexes.
Gravity is a harsh mistress.
Hippos can be pretty fast too, can’t they? I know they can’t be light…
hmmm, I found 'On land a hippo can run as fast as a man and can even gallop at a faster pace for short distances. ’ which sounds like 12-15 mph and weights from 5000-7000 lbs.
That could hurt.
The blue whale is certainly the biggest critter, and that speed is quite respectable, but I’m not ready to hand it the title just yet. Mightn’t there be some other whale which is smaller, but also enough faster to make up the difference? I am, however, pretty well convinced that the champ will be a whale of some sort (unless it’s possibly a giant squid).
Wouldn’t a Rhino of some sort be in there somewhere? - weight in the multiple thousands of pounds.
Yes, you’re right Mangetout, apparently the rhino can run at speeds of up to 25-30 m.p.h. and weigh up to 5 tons, though it is probably a good idea to note that it is always going to be unlikely that an animal at the upper end of the weight range is unlikely to reach the upper end of the speed range.
The rhino entry in wikipedia mentions an extinct variant called the Indricotherium which weighed around 30 tons (possibly the largest land mammal ever), no mention of how fast it may have travelled but it certainly has weight on it’s side, shame the poor thing went extinct.