Among animals, the cheetah is able to develop the highest speed - up to 130 km per hour! At short distances he will easily overtake a car. In water, no one can compete with a fish sailing, which in one hour overcomes 110 km. A peregrine falcon bird dives at a speed of 350 km per hour when diving. And what are the fastest insects known to you? They will be discussed in the article.
Australian dragonfly
In the course of scientific research, entomologists found out what is the fastest insect on our planet. This is an Australian dragonfly, or Austrophlebia costalis. For its large size, it is often called the "southern rocker". In one hour of flight, she overcomes at least 60 km! This achievement is even listed in the Guinness Book of Records. Some scientists claim that the dragonfly can fly at a speed of 100 km / h, but so far there is not a single documentary evidence of this theory.
How does an Australian dragonfly fly? This is the fastest insect on Earth in one second makes 100-150 strokes with its wings. When she needs maneuverability in pursuit of prey, she waves the rear and front wings alternately, and at the same time to develop super-speed. It is known that dragonflies are able to overcome huge distances, moving more than a thousand km from the house.
What other fastest insects live in our world? Read about them further.
Honey bee
Like a dragonfly, a bee can fly at a speed of 60 km per hour. But she often flies with nectar, which weighs as much as one insect. With a full honey ventricle, the working bee is already flying at a speed of 30-33 km per hour, so it is on the second line of the "Fastest Insects" rating.
But in the distance that the bee is able to overcome, it overtakes the dragonfly: to produce only 1 kg of honey, the insect flies at least 450 thousand km, which is about 10 earthly equators!
American cockroach
Periplaneta americana, or American cockroach, ranks third in our ranking. He is the fastest runner among insects. In 1991, it was recorded that this red-headed creature moves at a speed of 5.4 km / h. Not impressive? But if you count the cockroach speed in relation to human standards, it turns out that having the height of the average man Periplaneta americana would move at a speed of 350 km / h! And a cockroach can change its running direction 25 times in just one second.
This is the fastest land insect and also the most tenacious. A cockroach is able to not eat for a month and not drink 8-10 days without harming itself, hold its breath for 45 minutes, but the most amazing thing is that it can live without a head, while dying of hunger! Another amazing fact is that the female, after one mating, is able to retain the seed inside herself, later fertilizing herself several more times.
For comparison: a person can withstand up to 500 radiation exposure units, other living creatures - from 350 to 1500, but the red cockroach calmly withstands 6500 units. This means that after the atomic war on Earth there will be only cockroaches …
Racehorse
These bugs are common throughout the planet. They have an elongated body 10-40 mm long, only the genus Manticore, living in Africa, reaches a length of 70 mm. Color can also be different - bright green, spotty, black. Horse beetles are distinguished by large eyes, long antennae, and most importantly - thin high legs on which they run very quickly. The actual speed of their movement is 7.5 km / h, so prey rarely escapes from these predators. Scientists calculated that if these fastest insects were the size of a man, then they would easily overcome 300 km in an hour (a little less than red cockroaches). Also, the race-beetles fly well, developing rather high speed at short distances.
Horsefly
This large fleshy fly with large wings and simply huge eyes takes the fifth place among insects-record-holders in speed. She flies very quickly, overcoming 50-55 km in an hour. The horseflies are amazingly hardy, easily adapt to even the most adverse living conditions, and they are also very voracious - one individual drinks as much blood at a time as 70 mosquitoes can overpower.
