Superstars in action

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Dr. A.A. Quraishy

Wild animals have amazing abilities such as speed, strength, agility, and endurance. These qualities help them survive and live successfully in nature. Each animal is specially adapted to its environment and has unique skills. These abilities make the animal world fascinating and full of wonder.

I can not furnish a better and more familiar example in grace, speed and endurance than the famous darlings of the Olympics — who wave and fly in space as if they have winged sandles to their feet. With superb combination of all the three attributes to accomplish a near-miracle in the controlled movement of the body, they thrill and mesmerised millions of hearts, many of which can still vividly visualise the enchanting scene and almost touch its freshness.

I am sorry I must take my inquisitive readers from the ethereal canopy to the hard-crusted reality to appreciate that while champions are produced after a real tough regimen of years the urn over of the super-stars in the wilderness — on land, water and in the limitless sky — is far more astounding and no less remarkable.

Every one of them performs like a champion because on it depends its survival and the safety of the tribe. Each of them must passers be basic, aforesaid requisites in the right ratio for safety and success. If it lacks any its price is heavy — there very dear life. In animals, there is, therefore, no place for the average and the mediocres. They all are celebrated heroes.

Since all clans and families vary vastly in their form and figure the recourse of the top-notchers, in man's esteem, can be termed either fantastic or unimpressive instead of using his own yar stick, I will request the reader to please take off his tinted glasses to perceive the visit persecutive.

If he perform half-heartedly, he goes hungry. Under no circumstance he can revert to his mamma for the left-overs. He must, therefore, exert like a champion using all the guile and agility his head and heart can muster. Admirably gentle and pretty, he is not a savage as other cats are. Every inch he is a prima donna of the wilderness considerate and refined, not attacking even his worst enemy — the man.

But today with more sophisticated gadgets and the consequent tumbling of previous data the gold medalist stands challenged. Prong horn antelope of the Western United States has been clocked to the speed of "cheetah" viz. 60 miles per hour for two miles at an average speed of 36 mph for 45 minutes. A black buck outran them all at 65 mph, according to an unconfirmed report Scientists chased one buck for about ten minutes (the prong horn) and if their speedometer was correct, the prodigious antelope touched 75 mph. A cheetah would flop down miserably panting in half of that time.

Pronghorn can run at speeds close to 60 miles an hour

Or the peregrine falcon the one that loves chasing cooing pigeons) attains an incredible 60 mph (which has been questioned now) Wings folded, eyes afire, focussed on the quarry, with murder in mind, the assassin dives like a fire-spitting demon. If hits, the victim is tattered and she into smitheens by his razor-sharp, telons, if he misses he turns away in shame and disgrace, with his tongue protruding, panting and dejected (in fact he gets exhausted, out this is what the old thinking was). Whether or not he misses he has superb eyesight, he can spot the target from an impossible 3,500 feet.

The Peregrine Falcon is the fastest animal on Earth

But not every animal is a thunderbolt: the demure and lovely fish, which has a horse-like face will take, in emergency - one hundred hours to cover a mile. As far as my information goes, water is 800 times denser than air. The real test of speed and endurance is here; yet there are titans that defy and conquer it. The sail fish can achieve 68.18 mph even in this seemingly in preganceable wall of water. One of them took 100 yards of line just in three seconds when hooked.

The sword fish is also equally fast showing amazing bursts of speed, touching 35 to 40 mph. A blue-fin tuna, 59 lbs. in weight registered 43.4 mph in a 20 second dash. A 12-footer Mako shark, when chased, kept ahead of a boat cruising at 35 mph for over eighty hundred yards.

Amongst the record holders in sluggish community the threatened sloth of tropical America is noteworthy who can run 0.098 mph i.e. 6-8 feet in one minute, the slowest land mammal. Another crown holder a sluggish animal on earth, cannot be ignored a cousin of our Hawke's Bay crab, living in the Red Sea who brought disgrace to his diagonally propelled Crustacean tribe by taking 29 years to cover 101 miles to the Mediterranean via the Suez Canal at an average speed of three-and-half miles a year.

For record keeping the fastest reptile on land is the race runner, lizard of the USA, which attained 18 mph.

When we come to the marine turtles they wipe out all the stigma from the foregoing, lazy lout of the family — the land tortoise. The Pacific leatherback and the Atlantic Green turtle have flip-flopped upto 22 mph in their case too it is not the speed but the endurance they show in travelling which they love. A female tagged and released in Australia swam 2,000 miles in 63 days.

SNAKE VS HORSE: The general relief that a snake can outrun a horse is totally baseless. The measured speed of the fastest snake, the black mamba of Africa, on a favourable surface is only 7 mph (15 mph in short bursts) but stories that snake can overtake a galloping horse is a wild exaggeration. A man doing a 4-minute a mile is doing much better — 15 mph. Bobby Morrow's record 100 yards dash at 9.3 seconds is an average of about 22 mph. A well-bred race horse does go upto 40 mph and a record holder has done 43.26 mph. Dogs (grey hounds) do run very fast but a Saluki — the Arabian gazelle hound — as clocked 43 mph besting the grey hound by a length. The graceful Saluki — a silky streaker who adores children — hound would be boasting that he has more stamina and in a heated race between the two, the grey save a hell of a chase to the shaggy twiggy.

So, in animal kingdom, too there is speed endurance grace, precision, determination and an urge to complete — a bundle of priceless premium that insures against sickness, accidents untimely death by fire or foe. All have the grit and the knack for flying, swimming sprinting, for fun and frolic. After all the life is not fright and flight. Since the life is to end some day why not enjoy it to the fullest, whether in mirth or misery, in war or peace and be remembered as Superstars.