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Wednesday 9 January 2013

Man v beast: Why humans don't always come out on top

Man may dominate the planet... but other species are far superior at some feats

Man may dominate the planet... but other species are far superior at some feats.
Take songbirds, for example. Scientists have just discovered they have two sets of vocal cords, compared to our one.
This allows them to play two notes at the same time, even when flying.
Dr Coen Elemans, of the University of Southern Denmark, said: "Just imagine an orchestra musician playing his instrument while performing a dance. How do birds do this?"
And when it comes to running, Usain Bolt may be the fastest man on Earth but put him up against a cheetah and he doesn't stand a chance.
Humans don't only lag behind in singing and running. Here we look at how some of our fellow creatures excel...

Jumping

Humans are earthbound when it comes to jumping.
A mountain lion can leap 4.5m vertically while a flea can jump 23 times its own height.
For humans that would be a leap of 41.4m, higher than Rio's Christ the Redeemer statue.
Our best is 2.45m, set in 1993 by Cuba's Javier Sotomayor.
It's the same for the long jump. A snow leopard can leap 15 metres to pounce on its prey. Our top effort remains 8.95m, set by the USA's Mike Powell in 1991.

Weightlifting

Rhino beetles can out-muscle all competition, human or otherwise.
Strong muscles in the front part of their bodies let them lift 850 times their own weight.
Human world record holder Hossein Rezazadeh of Iran, who weighs 152kg and can lift 263 kg, would have to lift 129.2 tonnes - the equivalent of nine double decker buses - to match one.

Shooting

The archerfish preys on land-based insects, shooting them down by spitting water at them in Asian mangrove swamps.
Its aim is uncannily accurate, hitting the target first time in most cases.
They can hit grasshoppers and butterflies 3m out of the water.

Running and swimming

Usain Bolt may be the fastest man on the planet with an average speed of 23.72mph.
But put him up against a cheetah and he'll be lost in the dust. The fastest land mammal can accelerate up to 70mph.
We're fish out of water when it comes to swimming too. It just isn't our natural environment.
An Indo-Pacific Sailfish can reach 68mph in short bursts through the water - the best we can manage is 6mph.

Seeing

Our sight range is incredibly limited compared to many animals and we can barely function at all in the dark.
Bats use echolocation, a form of natural sonar, to create a 3D map of their surroundings based on sound waves to see in the dark. Dolphins and porpoises have similar powers.
Pit viper snakes have a pair of deep "pits" between the nostril and eye that are in fact heat-sensing organs which let them "see" in the dark.
And sharks can use electrical fields in their surroundings to detect prey.

Sense of direction

People nowadays can barely go to the end of the garden without using a satnav.
Unlike salmon, who spawn by finding their way back to the rivers they were born in years later and travelling thousands of miles across oceans.
Scientists think they use iron deposits in their brains to sense the Earth's magnetic field.
And a refined sense of smell means they can tell their home stream apart from any other.
Migratory birds use a similar system, to detect the Earth's magnetic field, which they use like a compass to navigate across huge distances.
Pigeons, as all true fanciers know, have the best "magnetoreception" of all thanks to iron-based structures in their beaks.
This gives them a "height-ened sense of spatial orientation", which, in plain English, tells them exactly where they are no matter now far it is from home.

Ability to communicate

We invented the phone and the internet. But in a power cut all we can do is grope our way to the kitchen for candles and matches.
Whales, however, have an intricate and distinctive song system they use to communicate with each other.
Researchers have found that they can communicate up to 6,000 miles apart.
But interference from the human world, especially noise from boats, has disrupted the songs and shortened the distance.

Diagnosing diseases

Cancer warning signs are often missed by sufferers and doctors, or misdiagnosed.
But German researchers managed to train four dogs to detect lung cancer by sniffing the breath of cancer patients as well as healthy volunteers.
In the study, they found the dogs correctly identified the cancer sufferers by their breath 74% of the time.
A dog's sense of smell is about 1,000 times more sensitive than that of a human and they are used to detect everything from truffles to bombs and drugs.

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