Totally Trivial Tuesday - More on Animals - Fastest Animals and Some Odd Bit

1. What's the fastest insect?

2. What's the fastest reptile?

3. What's the fastest rodent?

4. What's the fastest land mammal?

5. What's the fastest amphibian?

6. What's the fastest fish

7. What's the fastest bird

8. What's the highest flying animal?

9. What animal has the best sense of smell?

Some stuff about animals

There are about 60,000 species of vertebrate animals, which sounds like a lot, but there are nearly 1,000,000 species of insect; about 50,000 new species of animal are discovered each year http://www.factmonster.com/ipka/A0934288.html. And, while the Earth is overpopulated with 7 billion or so humans, entomologists estimate that there are that many insects on the average square mile of Earth. http://42explore.com/insects.htm. That's one heck of a lot of insects!

Answers

1. The fastest insect is the Australian dragonfly, at 24 MPH. The fastest land insects are tropical cockroaches Periplaneta Americana at 3.36 mph

2. The fastest reptile is the marine leatherback turtle, which swims at over 20 mph; on land, the fastest is probably the spiny tailed iguana, at 21 mph.

3. The fastest rodent is the Venezuelan jet black guinea pig, at up to 53 mph

4. The fastest land mammal is the cheetah, at 70 mph; in the water, the Dall porpoise swims up to 53 mph, as do some whales

5. The fastest amphibian, depending on how you define amphibian, may be the penguin, which swims at up to 55 mph; no one seems to have records on the more typical amphibians

6. The fastest fish is the sailfish, at 68 mph

7. The fastest bird is the peregrine falcon, which can dive at 200 mph

8. The Ruppell Griffon Vulture can go up to 7 miles

9. The shark can detect 1 part blood in 100 million parts water

Sources

Fastest insect http://www.funtrivia.com/askft/Question11268.html

Fastest reptile http://www.4to40.com/omg/index.asp?id=1444&category=fish

And http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_fastest_reptile_in_the_world

Fastest rodent http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_worlds_fastest_rodent

Other fastests http://nationalzoo.si.edu/Animals/AnimalRecords/default.cfm

And for oddities http://www.gkpet.com/animalfacts.html