Buzz
The natural world is full of creatures with abilities that stretch the imagination. While super speed is often a power reserved for fictional characters like The Flash, it’s an everyday occurrence for a select few species. These creatures don’t necessarily need to outrun, outfly, or outswim others. Instead, it’s the actions they perform while hunting, defending, or mating that happen faster than you can blink. In some cases, these feats occur even quicker than a bullet can travel. Here are ten astonishing species with super-speed capabilities.
10. Snapping Shrimp
The snapping shrimp, also known as the pistol shrimp, has earned its name for a reason. It has developed spring-loaded claws that snap so quickly underwater they shoot out a bubble of air. When this bubble bursts, it emits a flash of light and a sound as loud as a gunshot, stunning its prey. This event happens so rapidly that the bubble cannot be seen by the human eye, though the sound can be heard. The fastest snaps come from young snapping shrimps.
While the adult snapping shrimps’ snaps are still incredibly fast and can be captured on camera at a rate of 50,000fps, juvenile shrimps are capable of snapping twenty times faster, causing a blur at that same frame rate. To catch their speed on camera, scientists needed 300,000fps. This rapid claw motion is considered the fastest repeatable underwater action known.
9. Amphipods
Amphipods, also called beach-hoppers or scuds, are tiny crustaceans that measure about the size of a belly button. These creatures are found worldwide, with over 100,000 species. One species, Dulichiella appendiculata, from the Atlantic Ocean, can snap its claws at incredible speeds. This feat is quite remarkable considering its claws make up nearly a quarter of its body mass. However, unlike the snapping shrimp, amphipods do not use their claw strikes to stun prey using air bubbles.
Instead, amphipods use their rapid claw snaps for locomotion, propelling themselves from a standstill to speeds of over 62mph (100km/h) in just milliseconds. The reason behind this remarkable speed remains uncertain. According to evolutionary theory, such traits must have developed due to necessity. Since only male amphipods have claws, it is believed that this feature may be linked to mating behaviors or combat.
8. Cone Snails
Snails are typically not known for their speed, but the cone snail, found in the ocean, possesses a surprising and swift ability. It shoots venomous harpoons that strike with such speed that they are considered one of the fastest attacks in the animal kingdom. The harpoons travel at speeds so extreme that scientists have likened them to bullets in flight. The slow-moving fish these snails target stand no chance against the precise and rapid harpoons, which can reach an astonishing speed of 248.55 miles per second squared (400,000 meters per second squared).
Strikes from the cone snail’s harpoon occur within 100 microseconds of the missile being launched. The harpoon is unleashed once sufficient pressure accumulates, overcoming a latch mechanism that holds it in place. This rapid release is what allows the harpoons to travel at such incredible speeds. In 2019, researchers discussed how they were studying the harpoon mechanism to inspire the development of new robotic technologies or medical devices.
7. Jellyfish
Jellyfish, the nemesis of beachgoers everywhere, possess tentacles that deliver a sting through a mechanism so fast that it’s measured in nanoseconds—billionths of a second. The sting occurs when an organism touches the surface of a microscopic sac filled with venom called a nematocyst. This contact triggers the release of a razor-sharp dart, which is fired faster than a blink and at a speed comparable to a bullet. Although the dart only travels 10 to 20 micrometers, it does so in less than one millionth of a second.
The power behind this incredible speed comes from a special protein that stretches like a balloon on the verge of bursting. Launching the dart requires an extraordinary frame rate of about 1,430,000 frames per second to capture it on film. This launch generates a force one million times that of gravity. For context, astronauts typically experience around four to five g’s.
6. Frogfish
These strange, alien-like fish can be found on the sea floor near Australia and New Zealand. They tend to hide among coral and rocks, waiting for unsuspecting prey such as octopuses, crabs, prawns, and shellfish to wander too close. With large, round heads and broad mouths, these fish are impressive not just for their size, but for their hunting skills as well.
Frogfish possess the fastest bite of any vertebrate, even when biting through water, which is 800 times denser than air. Their jaws expand at speeds similar to those of a .22 rifle bullet being fired, offering little hope for prey to escape the grasp of this deadly ambush predator and its expandable stomach.
5. Spirostomum
These tiny, flat creatures measure just four millimeters and are commonly found in lakes and ponds. Despite being single-celled organisms, they possess an extraordinary defense mechanism that ranks them among the fastest-moving creatures on Earth. When startled, they can contract their bodies by about 60 percent, curling into the shape of an American football in just a few milliseconds. This rapid contraction accelerates at 656 feet per second squared (200 meters per second squared), all without using muscles like those of humans, and without damaging their internal structures.
The mechanism behind their rapid movement is more akin to springs, latches, and motors than muscles, or, more accurately, these mechanisms may inspire future technologies. Engineers are studying the spirostomum to help push forward advances in nanotechnology and miniature robotics. This research also debunked the outdated belief that single-celled organisms only serve as the building blocks for more complex tissues.
4. California Mite
This tiny arachnid can move at amazing speeds of almost 11.8 inches per second (30 centimeters per second or 0.9km/h. What is amazing about that? In terms of body length per second, these sesame-seed-sized speedsters move 332 times. If humans did this, they would be moving at 1,440 miles per hour 2,317 km/h). By this measure, California mites easily best other land animals.
Next is the Australian tiger beetle, which can manage 171 body lengths per second. Humans dwindle in comparison. Record-breaking sprinters like Usain Bolt only manage six body lengths per second and can only maintain their speed for short bursts. Scientists believe studying the biomechanics that allow the mites to travel so fast might help engineers improve the speed of robots and other devices.
3. Coprophilous
Another disgusting, dung-dwelling fungus achieves acceleration of up to 180,000 g’s, according to a paper published in 2008. We might be disgusted by its reproductive process, but coprophilous performs a crucial task for the planet’s habitability by breaking down dung. Like pilobolus, its spores must be consumed by animals to reproduce. This presents a problem; few animals eat in the same spot they do their business, so it needs to blast its spores a good few meters away.
The challenge is that the distance covered by these spores is many times their own microscopic diameter. This is achieved by forcefully shooting spores from structures that function like squirt guns. These spores accelerate at speeds up to 180,000 g’s, making them the fastest flyers in nature in terms of acceleration. Interestingly, the study revealed that the bulbs from which the spores are launched do not contain unusually high pressure compared to other fungal species. This suggests that the speed is a result of how the squirt gun mechanism expels pressure.
2. Pilobolus
While the speed of many organisms on this list has been compared to that of a bullet, researchers actually fired guns to determine if this fungus was faster. Pilobolus is a foul-smelling fungus that reproduces by being eaten by animals. After passing through an animal’s digestive system, it forms fluid-filled bulbs in the animal’s feces. When the pressure inside the bulbs reaches a critical point, it launches spores onto plants in the surrounding area, where they may be consumed by new animals.
The spores can reach speeds of about 82 feet per second (25 meters per second), or 56 miles per hour, which is quite impressive given their small size. Even more impressive, during a BBC experiment, they were filmed accelerating at more than 20,000 g’s, faster than a vintage Remington rifle’s bullet, which fires at around 9,395 g’s.
1. Horse Fly
These large flies are a nuisance to many summer visitors at woodlands, marshes, and beaches. While the females can deliver a painful bite and relentlessly seek the blood needed for egg production, it is the males that rank among the fastest creatures on Earth.
A North American male, in search of a mate, was recorded flying at an astonishing 90 mph (144.8 km/h). This speed is impressive by any animal's standards, but when translated into body length per second, it’s like a human moving at an incredible 4,054 mph (6,525 km/h). There are approximately 4,000 species worldwide that belong to the same family as horse flies, but none match their speed.
