3-Minute Insect Essential #22 from the INSECT NEWS NETWORK

EXTREMITIES AND COMPLEXITIES Part 1: How Bugs Do It w/ Prof. Neal Williams - INN #22. To hear the full show, visit www.insectnewsnetwork.com and type in the number 22 - that's pound 22 in the search bar.

Ussain Bolt broke the Olympic record for the 100 and 200 meter dash TWICE. He might be the fastest man who ever lived. But compared to the speed of some insects, he is just as slow as a snail.

The tiger beetle is considered the fastest insect on land. It can run at more than 1 meter per second. Its so fast that the land around it seems like a blur, and it's body moves faster than its brain can conceive. When it runs it makes itself dizzy.

Fastest runner - tiger beetle, Cole Gilbert, a professor of entomology at Cornell, worked with some American tiger beetles that ran about 1.2 mph or .53 meters per second. In other words, the relative speed of a human-sized tiger beetle running at 53 bl/s would over 240 mph! Imagine a 200-pound tiger chasing you that could run faster than Dale Earnhardt’s race car!