Have you ever wondered why the brightest or the strongest do not make it to the top? I am always amazed when the most mediocre individuals do so well. Most of the time, when I see I have to compete with someone with absolutely no ability, I give up because I know I cannot win. Conversely, I have no aptitude for politics as it is practiced in India and yet I do better than people with a real talent for it. Perhaps that is the reason the human species has done so well on the planet; because we are not the best at anything.
Look at our senses. Do we have the sharpest hearing? Nowhere near it. We come way down from bats and dolphins who find their way in complete darkness, or murky waters, using a biological sonar system called echolocation. This involves emitting ultrasonic chirps (or clicks) and interpreting the echo the sound waves make after bouncing off objects and other creatures in their vicinity. With each chirp, a bat or dolphin can tell the location, size, direction and physical nature of an object. A dolphin can detect a 2.5 cm object such as a coin, from 70 metres away.
Owls, in complete darkness take less than 0.01 of a second to assess the precise direction of a mouse. Elephants can hear at frequencies twenty times lower than us. Their exceptional hearing ability helps them ‘tune into’ things such as thunderstorms. Their low rumble calls can be picked up by other elephants 6 km away. Practically every animal and insect hear better than us.
Can we do anything with our noses except get colds? Most animals can smell their way out of danger. Dogs can sniff bombs, pigs can sniff mushrooms. Even an animal as small as the honeybee can detect land mines. Male emperor moths can detect a female from almost 11 km away. Mako sharks can smell blood in the water from 500 metres away. Polar bears can detect a seal or whale carcass from a distance of 32 km.
Do we have the best colour vision ? Less than the mantis shrimp. The greatest range of vision? Nowhere near the giraffe. It also has the longest and most mobile tongue. The loudest voice? The howler monkey’s voice can be heard 3 miles away. The Blue whales' low-frequency pulses are as loud as 188 decibels—louder than a jet engine—and can be detected more than 500 miles away. The toughest skin is the whale shark’s, up to 6 inches (15 cm) in thickness. Would we win a spitting contest? The archerfish can spit water 1.5m through the air to hit insects with deadly accuracy which would be like us trying to spit across a football field.
Are we the largest animals in the world? Inspite of Macdonald’s burgers we are nowhere near. The largest mammal in the world is the blue whale at 30 meters (98 ft) in length and 180 metric tons (200 short tons) or more in weight. The biggest land mammal is the African Elephant with the male 3.2–4.0 m (10–13 ft) tall at the shoulder and weighing 4,700–6,048 kg (10,000–13,330 lb).
Do we have the strongest muscles? Nope. Much weaker than the mussels we eat which use their muscles to cling to rocks. Most muscled? Nope. An elephant's trunk alone contains around 100,000 muscles and can lift up to 600 pounds (270 kilograms). The strongest bite belongs to the crocodile. The strongest arm wrestler is the gorilla. The best weight lifter is the dung beetle which can lift 1141 times its own bodyweight on its back. That would be like us trying to lift a double decker bus.
The froghopper, or spittle bug, is the insect world's greatest jumper. This tiny insect is a mere 0.2 inches (6 mm) in length but can catapult itself up to 28 inches (70 centimeters) into the air. A human with this ability would be able to clear a 690-foot-tall (210-meter-tall) skyscraper. Even the flea can leap 20cm. and long jump over 30cm. Which is like us leaping over a skyscraper and long jumping over eight buses. The impala, an African antelope, bounds up to 33 feet (10 meters) and soars some 10 feet (3 meters) in the air.
Can we run the fastest? The best sprinter is the cheetah which can accelerate from 0-60 mph in less than 3 seconds - quicker than most Ferraris. It can hit nearly 70 mph. The fastest animal is the Peregrine Falcon reaching speeds of over 320 km/h (200 mph) during its dive. The fastest land animal over a sustained distance is the pronghorn or American antelope at 56 km/h mph for 6 km. A Sailfish swims at 110 km/h (70 mph). Even an Ostrich can run upto 45 mph. We are not even as fast as insects. The American cockroach can go to 5.4 kilometres per hour, about 50 body lengths per second, which would be comparable to a human running at 330 km per hour. The fastest flying insect is the Southern Giant Darner, a dragonfly that flies at 97 km/h. Hawk moths fly at over 50 km/h. A kangaroo can hop faster than we can run and can do so for hours.
Can we swim the best? Porpoises can swim upto 55 km per hour. Elephants can swim for as long as six hours and 50 km without stopping. Humpback whales win the long-distance event by travelling more than 16,000 km each year. Even birds swim better :The Gentoo Penguin can swim underwater up to Kmph. Leatherback turtles and Emperor penguins take home gold for the deepest dive reaching depths of 1,200m but the best diver is the gannet who dives head-first into the sea at a skull shattering 60mph.
Can we dig the fastest? The aardvark can dig a burrow several metres long in less than five minutes. The highest living mammal is the yak which reaches 20,000 ft. The most heat-tolerant animal is Cataglyphis bicolor, a scavenger ant which lives in the Sahara desert. We are not even the stinkiest. Rotting human cadavers, garlic breath, feces and urine. These are nothing compared to the spray of the Striped Polecat or zorilla, the worst smelling animal.
Do we live the longest? If we did not kill them a tortoise could go up to 200 years and an elephant would easily surpass our average lifespan. Best boxer: Any young male kangaroo can outbox our best heavyweight champion. Best wrestler? Cockroaches often wrestle each other to death. The winner is the first to flip his opponent onto his back. Are we the most fearless? No way. The honey badger is. This little rodent takes on the deadliest animals on earth without fear. Scorpions, porcupines, tortoises, cobras, gazelles, crocodiles, horses, cattle, buffaloes. It will steal from leopards and lions.
Meet the honey badger, named “world’s most fearless animal” by the Guinness Book of World Records. Its ferocious reputation stems from the fact that the honey badger doesn’t hesitate to attack animals larger than itself. Scorpions, porcupines, snakes, young gazelles, lions and even small crocodiles - everything’s fair game. No surprise then that it is rarely preyed upon.
If intelligence is to be judged by language, using tools, and advanced problem solving: chimpanzees, dolphins and elephants are much smarter. They are also able to learn sign language to communicate with humans and can remember individuals they have not seen for several years, understand symbols for objects and complex ideas. They are extremely caring and empathetic to other members of their group and to other species, which is a highly advanced form of intelligence.
Even in the fine arts, a humpback male’s song can last 30 minutes and is more complicated than a human’s. The Olympics are coming up this year. Can any of our athletes hold a candle to these wonders of the natural world? We are not even the best at killing other humans, even though we try very hard. The anopheles mosquito kills more than a million humans a year with malaria!!
Maneka Gandhi
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