The fastest animals on Earth

The fastest animals on Earth can accelerate from 0 to 320 kilometers per hour in a time span five thousand times faster than the blink of an eye.

This is a widespread trait among insects, which manage this firstly because they possess a tiny mass and secondly because they can store and release energy in amazing ways.

Muscles alone are physically incapable of producing that much energy in such a short time. The speed at which muscle fibers can contract is limited and does not go beyond a certain point.

They get around this problem by using springs, with which they can slowly store energy by applying a small force over a long period of time, and then releasing it all at once.

They use their bodies almost exactly like a crossbow or a catapult, employing their flexible but strong exoskeleton as a spring, and charging it by flexing their large muscles.

There are insects that, in this way, reach accelerations 550 times greater than that of the earth’s gravity and that would crush any large animal. There is even a species of termite that is able to close its jaws in less than a thousandth of a second with an acceleration of around 300,000 g, using its own head as a spring.

This is simply not possible for large animals. The reason is that their body weight is minuscule in proportion to the force their muscles can exert, due to the law of the square cube.