Leibherr T 282B

Behold the mighty Liebherr T 282B dump truck!

It is one of the two or three largest dump trucks in production. By many measures, it’s the largest dump truck in the world.  The Leibherr T 282B  is 14.55 metter long (48 feet), 8.7 meters wide (29 feet) and stands 7.4 meters tall—a towering 24 feet! Unloaded, the truck itself weighs a staggering 600 short  tons! (A “short ton” is 2,000 lb; a “metric ton” is 2,205 lb.)

The T 282B can carry a maximum of about 400 short tons. It’s 3,500 horsepower engine can propel this monster truck to an astonishing 40 mph, fully loaded and weighing 1,000 tons!

Now, here is how the T 282B can help us understand in a physical way what’s going on in the Sun.  Consider this: our Sun converts approximately 600 MILLION tons of hydrogen into helium every second!  Every second!

That number is virtually impossible to conceive of in physical terms, but maybe the Liebherr T 282B can help gives an idea of what that much mass might mean.  Let’s imagine that instead of the gas hydrogen, the Sun’s nuclear fusion “burned” something the T 282B could carry — say, coal.

Now imagine 1.5 MILLION of these T 282Bs fully loaded with 400 tons of coal, roaring past you every second. That’s the equivalent mass of how much hydrogen is being converted to helium every second at the core of our sun!

This many T282Bs TIMES 50,000! Every second!

Of course, the hydrogen to helium conversion isn’t one-to-one, a very small fraction of the mass of the hydrogen is converted to energy according to Einstein’s famous equation, E =MC squared:

Nuclear Fusion Reactions in the Sun

Here’s a fuller explanation of the Sun’s fusion process from Wikipedia :

The proton–proton chain occurs around 9.2×10³⁷ times each second in the core of the Sun. Since this reaction uses four free protons (hydrogen nuclei), it converts about 3.7×10³⁸ protons to alpha particles (helium nuclei) every second (out of a total of ~8.9×10⁵⁶ free protons in the Sun), or about 6.2×10¹¹ kg per second.^[39] Since fusing hydrogen into helium releases around 0.7% of the fused mass as energy,^[40] the Sun releases energy at the mass-energy conversion rate of 4.26 million metric tons per second, 384.6 yotta watts (3.846×10²⁶ W), or 9.192×10¹⁰ megatons of TNT per second. This mass is not destroyed to create the energy, rather, the mass is carried away in the radiated energy, as described by the concept of mass-energy equivalence.

Kind of blows the mind, no? Our Earth actually intercepts an infinitesimal percentage of the Sun’s energy—maybe about one one-billionth of the Sun’s total energy output actually reaches the Earth.

Of all the Sun’s energy that does reach Earth, about 30 percent is immediately reflected back to space by clouds and the Earth’s atmosphere and surface. Most of the energy that is aborbed by the land, oceans, clouds, and atmosphere is subsequently radiated back into space. Less than one percent of the total energy that reaches Earth is used by plants for photosynthesis.

Earth Energy Cycle

It’s amazing to consider that every second a little more than 4 million metric tons of mass is converted to energy at the Sun’s core! Using the Leibherr T-282 B as our “measuirng cup” again, that’s a conversion of mass to energy of more than 10,000 T 282B dump truck loads of mass every second!

Or, put another, perhaps even more inconceivable way, the fusion reaction at the core of the Sun releases the energy equivalent of 9.192×10¹⁰ megatons of TNT per second!  That’s the energy of over 90 billion one megaton bombs every second!  No wonder the Sun is so hot, even though it’s incredbily massive compared to the (relatively) small amount of hydrogen being converted to helium.

Imagine 90 billion one megaton explosions each second!

Again, even with the help of our monster truck, it’s almost impossible for our minds to grasp the scales and magnitude of the masses and energies involved.

But maybe now, with some  imagination and the help of the mighty (by human scale!) Leibherr T 282B, we have a better grasp of the monumental physical processes going on in the Sun—the processes that make life here on Earth possible.

Now, who wants to test drive one of these big brutes?  I would love to give it a try! Just don’t ask me to parallel park one!

♡♡♡

You can read some excerpts from his books at my Metta Refuge blog:

The Star Thrower

Finding the True Face of the Universe in an Innocent Fox

Since discovering Eiseley, I have always been on the lookout for nature writing that catches the wonder, beauty and mystery of nature and science.  And that’s why I’d like to recommend two outstanding books I just finished reading: The Shark and the Jellyfish by Stephen Daubert and Dawn Light by Dianne Ackerman. Both are terrific writers, and Ackerman, who is also a poet, is especially evocative with her prose.

In The Shark and the Jellyfish, Stephen Daubert presents twenty-six nature stories that range in subject matter from the microscopic to the tectonic. Many of the stories are told from the viewpoint of the animals whose lives Daubert is investigating. I think you’ll be amazed, as I was, by the fascinating and complex interactions that many creatures have with each other and their environment. I learned more new things about ecology in this book than I have in along time.

Ackerman’s Dawn Light also has good, solid science and nature writing, but her book is much more poetic than The Shark and the Jellyfish. This isn’t a criticism of the Daubert’s book, which is obviously written with a deep love and empathy for his subject. Ackerman is writing a different kind of book, and I found many of her passages very moving.

Ackerman not only speaks to the science of our world, but to our place in it and how we think and feel about nature. As one reviewer said of the book, Ackerman wants us to “slow down and pay attention” to the beauties of our natural world. She shows us that we don’t have to live in a natural park to see daily wonders. Dawn Light is a book that will make you want to slow down and pay attention to our amazing world.

To further pique your interest, here are some excerpts from both books, with some related beautiful and fascinating nature images. Enjoy! I hope you’ll give these wonderful books a try.

Excerpt from The Shark and the Jellyfish by Stephen Daubert

(This is from “Eye of the Needle”—Daubert’s discussion of dragonfly eyes and how they see.  He begins by having us imagine that a dragonfly has landed on our finger as we look into its remarkable eyes.)

“The dragonfly’s eye covers most of its head with a spherical latticework of thousands of crystal facets. As you gently rotate your finger, you will see patches of color that stay centered in each of its eyes, not matter which what it turns. Though these eyes have no moving parts, two spots—one a bright highlight, the other a think, deep shadow—fixedly holds the center of their revolving orbs. These two marks travel across the compound eye, moving against the direction of their rotation, and—from your perspective—staying centered.

One of these spots, a bright glint that holds its place above the center point of each eye, is an image of the sun. It stays fixed at a constant angle of reflection. The other, a darker patch that stays positioned just below the sun glint arises from within—it is an image of the dragonfly’s retina. It is as dark as a pupil—light that falls on into that spot does not return but is absorbed and processed by the animal’s brain.

These two points—one of light, one of shadow—are constant features of the surface of the compound lens. They don’t move as the dragonfly’s head moves, giving the eyes the illusion of depth. It’s as though you were watching posts that moved more slowly than the surface because they were not on the surface, but deeper within. Yet the textured globe of those eyes is opaque, and pigmented in colors of the animal’s flanks and wings. You cannot see through it.

These biological star sapphires take longer to mature than do the eyes of most insects. Though dragonflies live only briefly as adults, their lifespan is quite long by insect standards. Season after season during the ice-free days of spring and summer, dragonfly nymphs develop underwater, stalking the streambed. The nymph may grow for up to five years before it emerges through the surface to being its week or two of adulthood. It will have snared hundreds of mosquito larvae, mosquito fish, and other prey, and will have survived a gauntlet of larger predators swimming above it on the food chain. Only rarely does one of the eggs laid by last generation survive through all those summers, finally spreading its cellophane wings to taste the air.

Looking out through those formidable eyes, the dragonfly commands a worldview we would find daunting indeed. Our brains use a different system of perspective, and we could not cope with the flood of visual information that these stream skimmers receive every moment. Dragonflies do not see the world divided into thousands of facets; their brains integrate the input from all their lenses into a seamless three-hundred-degree moving panorama. They view the day through a fish-eye lens, experiencing every direction simultaneously, constantly, continually.

They live in a vista dome stereoscopic in its depth across the midline of their sight, an IMAX presentation both front and back. On the wing, they watch the shoreline willows and horsetails approaching them, watch them accelerate to glide past when closest, and watch their profiles fall away behind—all at the same time. The scrolling tableau is anchored by twinned images of the sun, one implacably fixed against the blue sky above, the other a reflection skidding past the surface below…”

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Excerpt from Dianne Ackerman’s Dawn Light

“Being in nature at dawn always comforts me. I say that as sort of shorthand, because it’s really a mental knot. I do find it comforting to be in nature. But how can you be in what you are? All of our being, juices, flesh, and spirit occur in nature; nature surrounds, permeates, effervesces in, and includes us….

In 2000, Chinese scientists unearthed a 125-million-year-old fossil of a rodent-like creature they named Eomaia scansoria, “dawn mother.” Whenever we call some a rat we’re really harking back to our earliest ancestors, tiny tree hugging placental rodents that fled from the feet and teeth of dinosaurs scurrying up any available tree.

After the dinosaurs died out, dawn mothers could safely emerge, and they thrived, in time turning into all sorts of species. We descended from those tree shrews—five-inch-long mousy little beings that weighed under a pound, used hardy claws to climb, ate insects, and were all fur and appetite.

They were the first creatures to nourish a baby inside the mother’s body, the first mammal of the sort that populates the earth today with elephants and wombats and weasels and humans.

Let others appeal to Aurora, Eos, and other goddesses when they wake. I prefer to thank the small, timid dawn mother in us all.”

❧❧❧

The Shark and the Jellyfish by Stephen Daubert

Dawn Light by Diane Ackerman

♥♥♥

Image of Oil Erupting from BP well head

Click HERE to see the oil discharge live.  The speed and volume of the outflow is truly incredible.

Largely due to BP’s unwillingness to share data with outside experts, it’s very hard to determine just how much total oil has escaped or what the flow rates are for the escaping oil.

See: Uncertainty Abounds as the Gulf Leak Meter Ticks Higher

As of this writing, the most conservative estimates, offered by BP, are that at least 35,000 barrels, or 1,470,000 gallons, of oil are pouring into the Gulf of Mexico every day.

NASA- Oil Slick as of June 19

Scientists not working for BP say that the actual outflow could be much more than this— 1.9 to 2.5 to 4.2 million gallons a day.

Click this image (above) to see live readouts of oil discharge rates and total discharge estimates.

This means every hour, even by the most conservative estimates, at least 61,250 gallons of toxic oil are pouring out of the BP drill site.  It’s very hard to wrap one’s head around such a figure.  In less than an hour, you could fill up the gas tank of 4,000 mid-sized cars.  That’s 96,000 cars in a day—day after day after day.

With the earliest possibility of stopping, or at least slowing down, the discharge now projected to be in August (assuming no major hurricane strike the Gulf), there’s no doubt that this  will be the Gulf’s greatest man-made environmental disaster:

See: BP spill nears a somber record as Gulf’s biggest

Every day, the volume of escaping oil could fill the gas tanks of 96,000 mid-sized cars

Depending on the oil-flow rates, the total amount of oil released and polluting the Gulf is anywhere from 114,000,000 to 195, 000,000 gallons (and counting) of oil.  CNN has a terrific interactive multimedia page that allows you to change discharge rates in order to see the range of volumes involved:

CNN Interactive - Oil By The Numbers -Mid-range Estimate

Click HERE to see CNN’s interactive information on the spill.

A site that really “brings home” the scale of the spill is the If It Was My Home website.

They have an interactive page called “Visualizing the BP Oil Spill Disaster.”  When you go to this link (click HERE) the page determines your location and then does an overlay of your area showing you the extent of the spill in terms of geography you know.  You can also put in any location you want to compare the spill size.  Here are a few screen shots of the kind of maps you’ll see:

BP Gulf Spill's present location

BP Gulf Spill Overlaid on San Francisco Bay Area

BP Gulf Spill Overlaid Great Lakes Area

BP Gulf Spill Overlaid New England Area

UPDATE: The New York Times has just added this very helpful interactive map, showing the oil’s surface movement through July 5, 2010:

Tracking the Oil Spill in the Gulf

New York Times Oil Spill Interactive

The Environmental Price of the BP Deepwater Horizon Catastrophe

The tragic human impact of the spill is continuing to unfold, but the the full scope of the environmental impact is almost impossible to measure.  When you look at the extent of the oil spill in images above, remember two things: (1) These overlays only show the extent of the oil spill on the surface, not the enormous underwater oil plumes, and (2) this vast area is actually the home of countless creatures, great and small.  The dead bodies that make it to shore or can be found on the surface will indicate only the smallest faction of the precious lives lost out at sea, which no one will ever see or know about.

To date, according to CNN’s interactive site, more than 1,600 dead animals have been found by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. But again, this tells us nothing about the countless numbers of animals who have died hundreds of miles out at sea, whose bodies have sunk into the depths

Kemp's Ridley Turtle

Particularly at risk are Green Sea Turtles and the endangered Kemp’s ridley turtle.  Tragically, thousands of hatchlings of this beautiful sea turtle are swimming right into the heart of the spill area.  Because their instinct is to seek shelter and food among the floating sea vegetation, they head straight for thick clots of oil and oil-soaked seaweed.  Instead of finding security and food, they are poisoned, trapped and asphyxiated.

And if that weren’t tragic enough, it turns out that shrimp boats hired by BP to corral floating oil with booms and set it on fire have been burning hundreds if not thousands of the young turtles alive. It is enough to make you weep.

At this point, it’s tempting to show some of the horrific images of the birds and animals dying terrible deaths by the oil, but after the initial shock wears off, I think such images only tend to numb us.  However, if you need to offer evidence of the kind of devastation that’s taking place right now, day after day, then links like this can be helpful:

Caught in the Oil – The Big Picture (WARNING – this Boston Globe web page has very disturbing images of Gulf animals trapped in the oil.  Not everyone needs to look at such images of suffering; take care of your hearts.)

Being informed, however, is critical, if we are to make intelligent decisions as citizens and to be able to “speak the truth to power.”   I hope this blog adds to your store of useful knowledge and inspires you to action.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch may contain over 100 million tons of debris and is nearly the size of the continental United States.

If any good at all comes out of this disaster, maybe it will be a heightened awareness of the fragility of our planet, of the inter-connectedness of all life, and of our need to be much, much more responsible with our use of natural resources.  We cannot put our future, or the future of our ecosystems, in the hands of  Big Oil and multinationals whose only goals are to make profit, regardless of the cost to humans and the environment.

This blog has talked about this again and again:

We’re Killing Our Oceans

Global Warming and the Loss of Earth’s Coral Reefs

The Moral Math of Climate Change

The BP Gulf Oil Disaster-Send in the Microbes!

We have to keep in mind what’s at stake when we use Earth’s natural resources.  And as a species, we have to have a profound change of consciousness (and heart!) in terms of how we related to the natural world, and each other.  If  we do not radically change, we really will destroy ourselves and much of the life on Earth.

To conclude, here are just a few of the beautiful creatures who are “at risk” because of the BP Gulf Oil Spill.  I hope these images of healthy animals inspire folks to do whatever they can, wherever they live, to preserve and protect our precious wild heritage.

Nature is not “out there.”  We are nature, and nature is us, and if we destroy nature, we destroy ourselves.

The future of the world is in our hands—what will we do?

What you can do:

One of the most disturbing aspects of this catastrophe has been the degree to which BP has kept important data and information from scientists and the press.  In the name of “safety,” journalists and photographers are often being kept from doing the investigative reporting that is essential for an informed public.  Incidents like the following are not uncommon:

From the Ground: BP Censoring Media, Destroying Evidence

The people of America need to speak up and defend our First Amendment rights of a free press.  The FAA and United States Coast Guard should not be used to serve and protect the self-interests and purposes of British Petroleum.  People speaking up can make a difference.  You can:

Write to the President of the United States

http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/

Write your Representative:

https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml

Write your Senator:

http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm?OrderBy=state&Sort=ASC

UPDATES AND RELEVANT LINKS

BP Nears Turning Point in Gulf Crisis (This Wall Street Journal interactive site has some of the best diagrams and scientific explanations of the disaster and how engineers are trying to fix it that I’ve found on the web.)

AP: Gulf awash in 27,000 abandoned gas, oil wells

Apocalypse in the Gulf: Could a Sinkhole Swallow the Deepwater Horizon Well — And BP?

The BP/Government Police State

BP Media Clampdown: No Photos Of Dead Animals, Please

Oil Spills Then are Oil Spills Now (video)

BP Decisions Set Stage for Disaster

Cheers, Worries Greet New Cap on Oil Well
Device Poses Threat of Leaks—and Prompts Questions About Why It Wasn’t Used Earlier

THE DISASTER IS NOT OVER—IT’S JUST BEGINNING FOR THE GULF ECOSYSTEM!  Please read:

The BP Cover-Up

♥♥♥

Extra! Extra! Read all about it! C. megalodon mega-shark demands rematch with old nemesis Predator X.  Says newly discovered “Moby Dick” sperm whale is all tooth and no bite! Extra!  Read all about it!

OK, having a little fun here! Yesterday’s post was:

Does prehistoric “Moby Dick” sperm whale dethrone the mighty Predator X?

In this post, I compared some of the greatest predators in the history of our planet.  I ventured that the crown should still belong to Predator X as probably having the most dangerous bite of all time.

Predator X - The King of Crush

But I also offered the view that the newly discovered ancient sperm whale, Leviathan melvillei, may well have had a killing bite to match Predator X. It certainly had bigger teeth!

So did the first post disrespect C. megalodon, the greatest shark of all time, the ultimate”Jaws,” which dwarfs modern great whites the way a Rottweiler dwarfs a Chihuahua?

Today's white shark and the mighty C. megalodon

C. megalodon was certainly one of the greatest sea predators of all time, if not the greatest—but that’s a point of debate! It is certainly one of very biggest fish of all time, although the largest sea creature that’s ever lived is still today’s magnificent blue whale. And since the mighty blue whale eats krill and small fish, it could be argued that the blue whale is in fact the greatest predator of all time, as one observant reader noted.

Whether a 50-60 foot shark or marine reptile would dare take on a 80 to 100 foot blue whale is open to question! Packs of orca have been known to attack blue whales, but one-on-one, between two creatures, would be a different matter, no doubt. The blue whale is incredibly fast for its size, too, and is able to hit bursts of 30 mph, and so wouldn’t be easy to catch unless surprise attacked. (The blue whale is one of my favorite creatures. Be sure to see my post: The Largest Animal That’s Ever Lived.)

The Mighty Blue Whale, the Largest Animal that Ever Lived

When it comes to comparing these ancient, toothy super predators, I knew what I’d written might be controversial. Why? Because sizing up C. megalodon has always been controversial. So, I wasn’t surprised, and rather delighted, to get an immediate and engaging comment on the post, taking C. megalodon’s side:

According to Wikipedia, the latest estimates of Megalodon are that it had a size of about 20 meters and a mass of about 100 metric tons. The bite force was about 41,000 lbf, which leaves Predator X in the dust at 33,000 lbf. It was more massive than Predator X, had a more powerful bite, had serrated teeth which were perfect for slicing, and basically never ran out of teeth. In other words, megalodon would likely have whupped both Predator X and this new sperm whale if they had co-existed. It probably fed on blue whales and other large whales.

Well, what about it? Let’s have some fun and take a look at the scientific facts, estimates, and theories surrounding these magnificent ancient creatures. I still feel that what I wrote in the first post is scientifically defensible, although some might argue I’m too conservative about claims for C. megalodon. If you rummage around the internet, you’ll find that some predators almost have fan clubs, and there are huge debates and flame wars over which animal is more ferocious than another. But, I think this (non-flaming) commenter makes a good point, so let’s have some fun and  look into it!

C. megalodon and the Fossil Problem

The first thing to know about C. megalodon, if that we have no complete skeletons of them—none, nada. Good shark fossils are extremely rare. Like all sharks, C. megalodon did not have bones; their bodies consist of tissue and cartilage.  Dead sharks rot and disassemble quickly. Rapid decomposition means there’s little left to preserve. So, what paleontologist usually find are the hardest parts of the shark: its teeth, its jaws, and sometimes, vertebrae.

This presents a problem. As our beloved and oft-quoted Wikipedia tells us, “Estimating the maximum size of C. megalodon is a highly controversial and difficult subject.” Indeed! The reason for this is the lack of definitive fossil evidence. So, what scientists have done is hypothesize that the great white shark is (apparently) a good analogue for C. megalodon. Based on this assumption, scientists then rely on what they know about morphology of great whites to make assumptions and estimates about C. megalodon.

Of course, there are obvious problems with this.  And in fact, the most recent hypothesis about great whites is that they are only distant relatives of C. megalodon and actually share a closer relationship to ancient mako sharks. So, we just don’t know, and probably never will know, if our the body structure of the modern great white can tell us anything final about C. megalodon.

C. megalodon—A Controversial Fish Measured by Its Teeth

OK, so if we don’t have complete fossils of C. megalodon, how in the heck do researchers come up with these huge size estimates? Relying on the morphology of great whites, scientists make estimates based on the statistical relationships between tooth sizes and body lengths of the great white. To date, the largest C. megalodontooth measures about 7 and 5/8 inches in length:

Largest known C. megalodon Tooth

Simple, right? If a C. megalodon tooth is size X, then that means the shark was length Y. Piece of cake. Except it’s not. Here’s where the “”Estimating the maximum size of C. megalodon is a highly controversial and difficult subject” part comes in, even assuming that a great white is a good analogue for Megalodon.

I’m not going to spend time rehashing all the controversies and various statistical methodologies scientists have come up with for estimating the physical anatomy of C. megalodon. But Wikipedia does do a nice overview, and there are at least 5 or more methodologies that arrive at varying answers. In general, Randall, Gottfried, and Jeremiah arrive at calculated estimates in the 40 to 50 foot range, and a shark weighing around 50 tons. No small fish!

Well, what about speculated, non-calculated maximum, based on no existent fossil tooth? Some scientists speculate that the “mother of all C. megalodons” might—repeat, might—have reached 60-65 plus feet.  Based on one group of researchers way of calculating body mass, this would translate into a 100 ton shark. Is this length and weight credible? Well, who knows? Without the “mother of all shark fossil teeth” to use for some sort of scientific calculation (calculations which are themselves debated) how can we ever verify this?  Is it even likely?  Scientific opinions actually vary.

Everyone can and should have their own opinion on this, but speaking for myself, I would tend to stay with the conservative estimates that are actually based on real teeth and that use some sort of good statistical/mathematical model: a 40 to 50 foot and 50 ton fish, with 60 feet a possible upper limit for a super fish.. (The largest C. megalodon fossil tooth is about 7 inches and 5/8ths inches long, and to me, that tooth points to the smaller sizes based on researchers own tooth/size formulas.)

Comparing C. megalodon’s and Predator X’s Bites

There’s no doubt that a 50 plus foot, 50-ton fish with 7 inch long serrated teeth has one hell of a bite! Take a look at this reconstruction of C. megalodon’s jaws, and then imagine these jaws connected to 50 tons of muscled fury. A man can stand upright in those jaws! It would swallow a diver whole!

C. megalodon's mighty jaws

Although as yet we don’t have a similar Predator X reconstruction, compare the shark’s gape with the gape of Predator X, whose teeth were daggers twice as long as C. megalodon’s..

Predator X's toothy gape

Well, what do you think?  Which jaw does more damage to a larger animal, since either swallows a diver whole!  I think the bigger, deeper, nastier bite goes to Predator X, but that’s just my personal opinion. You may prefer the big shark’s bite with those serrated teeth. Any large whale in ancient seas attacked by either of these predators was certainly doomed.

So, how about bite force? Here’s where my commenter friend claims that C. megalodon clearly wins, referring to Wikpedia and with its citation of an estimated (by some researchers)  41,000 lbf (bite force) compared to Predator X’s estimated 33, 000 lbf.

This high figure for C. megalodon is based on estimates done by researcher Stephen Wroe in 2008 on the white shark’s biting power. This range for C. megalodon is based on the assumption that C. megalodon’s bite was 6 to 10 times that of a great white. (Again, the great white assumption!) Since a great white bites with a calculated 4,000 lbf, the 6 to 10 times figures for C. megalodon represent a range of possible bite forces of 24,000 lbf to 40,000 lb.   The upper limit seems to be based on the assumption that the great white shark is an accurate analogue for C. megalodon and that it could have reached the (to me) unlikely 65 foot/100 ton range.

I don’t know the science behind these estimates or what the basis is for the claim that C. megalodon’s bite had to be 6 to 10 times that of a great white.  So, while I can’t comment on the how accurate these estimates might be, I can certainly assert that there no definitive proof in these range of estimates that C. megalodon bit harder than Predator X.  It might have, but we just don’t know—just as we don’t know if C. megalodon could surpass 60 feet in length, rather than the more conservative, actual tooth-calculated sizes of 40 to 50 feet.  We can argue “likelihoods” all day, no doubt!

And what about the newly discovered “Moby Dick” super sperm whale?

The debate as whether C. megalodon or Predator X was more “bad ass” is endless, and it’s a lot of fun.  But such debates are irresolvable, in my opinion, and finally, online debating is not doing  science. This blog isn’t a place to debate the issue of what animal could “whup” the other (thank you, original commenter, for the “whup” analogy!), though it’s open to views and surmises that are based somewhere in actual scientific research and data.

Ancient sperm whale Leviathan melvillei

So, where does the gigantic, toothy extinct sperm whale, Leviathan melvillei fit in the picture? At 60 feet in length, the size of a modern sperm whale, and with a killer whale-like mouth, with upper and lower teeth that were 14 inch long daggers that fit together like shears, I think Leviathan melvillei had one formidable bite. And it was huge—considerably bigger than Predator X, and probably bigger than most C. megalodons that we have actual physical evidence for.

I couldn’t’ find any bite force figures for Leviathan melvillei, which isn’t surprising, given what a new discovery it is. Since the jaw structure of Leviathan melvillei is so different from a modern sperm whale, there’s probably no helpful analogue comparing them. Maybe the bite force of a killer whale would be a better analogue, but the head structure of a sperm whale is very different from that of killer whales. We just don’t know, as yet, how powerful we might be able to estimate the muscles and jaw structure of this new beast might have been.

Ladies and Gentlemen, maybe, it’s a draw!

If I was a betting man, I’d probably still put my money on Predator X as the ultimate predator.  (Again, scroll back up and compare the jaws and gapes of Predator X and C. megalodon.)  But I certainly can understand arguments for the possibility of some C. megalodon on steroids as the champ.  It could be argued that the serrated teeth 7 inch teeth of the shark might cut better than Predator X’s 12 inch daggers.  But Predator X might be able to take a bigger bite with its massive jaws. Again, maybe!

If bigger shark teeth are dug up, I’ll believe in bigger sharks.  As for the new kid on the block, Leviathan melvillei, it might be too early to say. In any event, 60 foot-long, 50-ton sperm whale with an orca-like mouth filled with 14 inch teeth would be do horrendous damage to anything it attacked.

Who knows what will show up? Maybe some fossil hunter will find a C. megalodon tooth bigger than the current record 7 and 5/8 inch tooth. Maybe the Predator X that was found wasn’t full-grown and even bigger pliosaurs are waiting to be discovered. Ditto Leviathan melvillei. Or maybe some entirely new beast will show up:

"Actually, my 'bark' is much worse than my bite!"

It’s fun and fascinating to learn about the biggest, fastest, strongest, longest, tallest things in nature. This blog is all about such marvels. It’s fun to think, “Just how big might some creature have gotten? What’s the theoretical limit?” The quest to answer these kinds of questions never ends.  But always, in science, the emphasis is on physical evidence and theories that are in some way testable or verifiable.  Where solid evidence or testability are lacking, then it seems right to me to be conservative about what’s theoretically possible or what’s likely.

All three of these great ancient predators are marvels in their own right, and unlike movie monsters, these monsters actually lived and hunted in our seas.  Today’s great white sharks and killer whales are, after humans, top predator of the seas. They—and our oceans—deserve to be protected so that future generations will be able to marvel at the wonders of our oceans and the creatures that live in them.

The future of the world is in our hands—what will we do?

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Mature male saltwater crocs can be 6 metres (20 ft) or more and weigh 1,300 kilograms (2,900 lb) or larger

Forget about Sarcosuchus, the 30 foot long prehistoric SuperCroc:

Sarcosuchus model

Forget about today’s white sharks:

Great White Sharks have exceeded 6 metres (20 ft) in length and 2,240 kilograms (4,938 lb)

Forget about the prehistoric shark C. megalodon:

Model of C. megalodon shark's head

Every diver's worst nightmare

Forget about the mighty T-Rex:

T-rex is probably still the king of bite of land animals who have lived, although Deinosuchus, an extinct alligator, may have had a stronger bite

When it comes to the Bad Dude of Bites, no creature that ever lived can match the mighty pliosaur called Predator X:

Predator X attacking a plesiosaur

Thought to have a bite 11 times as strong as that of Tyrannosaurus rex, Predator X (a new kind of pliosaur) bit down with a calculated power of over 15 tons or 33,000 pounds of bite force.  By comparison, today’s alligators, which have the strongest known bite of any animal, crush down with “only” 2,500 pounds of bite force.  Predator X was at least 50 feet long and would have weighed more than 45 tons.

Predator X (bottom) compared to a blue whale, the largest animal that's ever lived, and a modern orca, or killer whale

Surely, Predator X was the mightiest predator that ever lived—or was it?

A recent fossil discovery in Peru by paleontologists may mean the mighty Predator X has been deposed from its throne—or at least, met its match.  The new contender is a prehistoric sperm whale that lived about 12 million years ago.  The paleontologists that discovered it have named it Leviathan melvillei, in honor of Herman Melville, author of Moby Dick.  The jaws and teeth of this prehistoric sperm whale might have given even mad Captain Ahab pause:

Leviathan melvillei probably hunted baleen whales

Super Moby Dick

Leviathan melvillei, an ancestor of sperm whales, grew up to 60 feet long—comparable to today’s biggest sperm whales.  What sets it apart from today’s sperm whales is that its mouth was more like that of a modern orca, or killer whale, with upper and lower teeth.  The sperm whale only has lower teeth, which fit into sockets in the top of its mouth:

Sperm whales only have lower teeth which fit into upper sockets

The killer whale has both lower and upper teeth, but they do not interlock for shearing like the teeth of Leviathan melvillei do

The mouth of Leviathan melvillei had interlocking teeth that sheared past each others.  Clearly, Leviathan melvillei’s teeth and jaws were designed to rip and tear huge chunks of flesh out of other whales and probably large sharks as well.

Consider this: Leviathan melvillei lived at the same time that C. megalodon lived.  Both were top predators. One can only imagine what a confrontation between those two monsters was like!  With such formidable teeth, no doubt, whoever struck first was the victor.

Leviathan melvillei's teeth were 4 inches longer than this 10-inch T-rex tooth!

Leviathan melvillei’s  tusk-like teeth were about 36 centimeters (14 inches) long, almost twice the length of modern sperm whales. In comparison, the longest T-rex tooth  measures about 27  centimeters, a little over 10 inches from root to tip.  It’s longer and bigger around than Predator X’s 12 inch teeth. Imagine a tooth as long and big around as a man’s forearm!

Scientists believe the typical prey of the Leviathan melvillei would have been baleen whales  that were 20 to 25 feet in length.  The jaws, teeth, and muscles of Leviathan melvillei would have needed to incredibly strong and powerful to withstand the stress of struggling prey of this size.

“This is a pretty exciting discovery,” says Erich Fitzgerald, a vertebrate paleontologist at Museum Victoria in Melbourne, Australia. Leviathan represents “one thing we don’t have in the oceans today — a macropredator, a hypercarnivorous whale.”

So, who gets your vote for the top predator of all time?  The super sperm whale, Leviathan melvillei?  Or is Predator X still the king?  In either case, these are the greatest jaws of all time.

Extra! Extra! Read all about in tomorrow Exreme Science post! C. megalodon mega-shark demands rematch with old nemesis Predator X. Says newly discovered “Moby Dick” sperm whale is all tooth and no bite! Read all about it in tomorrow’s post!

Go to: Megalodon Shark Demands Rematch with Predator X and “Moby Dick” Sperm Whale!

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We’re Killing Our Oceans

Global Warming and the Loss of Earth’s Coral Reefs

The Moral Math of Climate Change

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch may contain over 100 million tons of debris and is nearly the size of the continental United States.

The ongoing disaster and calamity of the BP Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico is yet another example of the risk our fragile ecosystems face when human beings treat the Earth as a resource to be exploited and not the only home we humans have ever known, as Carl Sagan famously put it in his “pale blue dot” talk.

Without An Ethical Vision of our Planet, We and Countless Beings Are Doomed

Let me be clear. I understand that humans need to utilize Earth’s resources in order to live and survive. The critical issue is: what values, ethics, and vision of the planet do we bring to our use of resources?

For most of mankind’s technological history, the Earth has been treated as an unlimited natural resource, with little regard to the short or long-term consequences of human actions. This ignorance and disregard has now reached “critical mass.” Entire ecosystems, like our reefs, and the viability of the oceans themselves are now at risk.  Around the world, mass extinctions are taking place. Runaway climate change could lead to the death of tens of millions of humans and the end of civilization as we now know it.  And yet powerful vested interests continue to manufacture doubt, although the scientific consensus is very clear.

This pro-science blog is not anti-technology when technology is in service to a genuine and deep morality that understand the inter-connectivity and interdependence of all living things on this planet.  But BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill graphically illustrates what happens when gigantic multinational corporations call the shots on their impact on the environment and basically dominate the governments of the world.

When Giant Multinationals Run the Show It’s a Recipe for Disaster

BP (British Petroleum) is a case study of all that’s wrong with how we allow multinationals get away with, literally sometimes, murder. After the Texas City refinery explosion five years ago, several investigations launched in the aftermath of the refinery explosion concluded that BP’s aggressive cost-cutting efforts in the area of safety, the use of outdated refinery equipment and overworked employees contributed to the blast.

The power and influence of Big Oil to determine or influence political and environmental policy can be seen all over the world, usually with disastrous results.  Here in the US,  only a year ago, for example, the United States Interior Department exempted BP’s Deepwater Horizon drilling operation in the Gulf of Mexico from a detailed environmental impact analysis. It was just Big Business as usual.

See:

BP has a long record of legal, ethical violations” May 8, 2010 by McClatchy Washington Bureau

How BP Has Thwarted Independent Scientific Scrutiny

The Oil Rupture - The equivalent of one Exxon Valdez spill every 3.5 to 2.4 days!

From the beginning, independent scientists have been requesting the right to monitor the amount of oil that is actually being released per day, but BP has resisted every effort to be monitored. As recently as May 15, a BP spokesperson said “no” to all such monitoring, claiming that efforts to calculate the flow are “not relevant to the response effort, and it might even detract from the response effort.”

Since the independent scientists aren’t asking BP to make any calculations or to interfere with the response effort, this answer seems disingenuous at best. Happily, you don’t have to have the permission of BP to do good science! Steven Wereley, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Purdue University, analyzed videotape of the leak using a technique called particle image velocimetry. He estimated oil flow rates at between 56,000 to 84,000 barrels per day—or equivalent to one Exxon Valdez spill every to 2.4 to 3.5 days!

A second, “smaller leak” has been estimated to be releasing 25,000 barrels per day. Independent scientists are now suggesting that the total size of the leak may well be in excess of a staggering 100,000 barrels per day! This would make the Deepwater Horizon oil spill  be one of the largest oil spills in history and perhaps the worst man-made disaster yet recorded.  The size of the spill expands hugely each day:

Extent of Oil Spill on May 17, 2010 - NOTE: This only shows surface oil, not the far more voluminous deep water plumes! - MODIS satellite image

With the failure of the latest attempts by BP to stop the rupture, it now looks like it might be late August, nearing the peak of the hurricane season, before the rupture can be stopped.  In the meantime, oil will continue to gush out at the rate of one Exxon Valdez spill every two to three days! As the mass of oil expands, oceanographers are also increasingly worried that the oil will get caught up in what is called the Loop Current.

Loop Current

As a highly informative article at Environmental News Service explains: “The Loop Current is an area of warm water that comes up from the Caribbean, flowing past the Yucatan Peninsula and into the Gulf of Mexico. From there, it curves east across the Gulf and flows south parallel to the west Florida Coast. As it flows between Florida and Cuba it becomes the Florida Current as it moves through the Florida Straits, where it joins the Gulf Stream as it travels up the Atlantic Coast.“

Can you imagine what will happen if all this oil gets caught up in the Loop Current and then enters and pollutes the mighty Gulf Stream?  The entire East Coast of America is at risk if this happens, not to mention vast ecosystems. Clearly, the longer stopping the oil eruption takes, the greater the environmental disaster, which is already unprecedented.

How Science Can Help—Send in the Microbes!

The long-term solution to the problem of Big Oil multinationals domination of the world’s economies and governments will require people everywhere to take use the power of democracy and protest to bring real change. But this is a science blog, not a political blog. What more can science do to help mitigate this growing environmental disaster?  Capping the rupture is critical, but so is lessening the environmental damage.  We actually have powerful allies that can help us, but we have to think small, very small!

In fact, we need to think microscopic!  Because so far, we have so far failed to bring to bear on this disaster the tremendous potential of an ally that comes from nature herself—the oil-eating microbe. Meet Alcanivorax borkumensis—one of the good guys:

Our Friend - Alcanivorax borkumensis

This microbe, and genetic variants, has the remarkable ability to digest oil, rendering it harmless. Because of its successful use in past oil spills, I’ve been surprised that we hadn’t heard any officials talking about using this amazing microbe to fight the spill in an environmentally sound way. Then, someone sent this great “homemade” video to me, and it really lit a fire under me to get the word out and try to alert people to how this technology could literally help save the day:

As the video’s caption says, “The Texas Land Office and Texas Water Commission successfully used ‘oil eating’ microbes to clean up large oil spills in just weeks. Microbes hunt down and eat the toxic oil and leave only a biodegradable waste that is non-toxic to humans and marine life. Marshland and beaches were pristine again in just weeks—not years like the Exxon Valdez spill. This is the answer to save the seafood industry and all the precious creatures we are about to kill.”

Urge Officials To Act Now!  Every Individual Action Matters!

I urge you to send this video and the information in this blog to as many people as you can. Write your representatives in Congress. Write President Obama. Call the networks. Spread this video all over the internet and share with everyone you can think of. Oil-eating microbes aren’t some silver bullet, but the science behind their use is good and has been proven effective in real life disasters.  Even though there are technical problems to work out in utilizing oil-eating microbes, few options offer as many benefits as this technology.  As I said, as a science writer, I have been wondering why these amazing microbes haven’t been used already (I think I know why, but don’t get me again started on the moral derelictions of Big Oil!)

Officials need to work fast on this because with the hurricane season upon us, the potential for this ocean environmental disaster to become an unprecedented inland disaster is huge. Can you imagine what will happen if a Category 3 or greater hurricane comes into the Gulf and not only picks up the surface oil, but churns up the deeper oil and send a deadly, toxic spray ten, twenty, even thirty miles inland? It will make any US, or even world, environmental disaster pale in comparison.

This MSNB video explains the potential for disaster with hurricane season:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/37427450#37427450

If you want to learn about the biology of our microbe hero go here:

http://microbewiki.kenyon.edu/index.php/Alcanivorax

And here are some less technical articles giving the background science on oil-eating microbes and their use.  I especially recommend the website for the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), which has some terrific, very accessible articles.

AAAS – The Science of the Oil Spill

Knowledge is Power – We Can Work Together to Bring Change

My hope is that this article will provide people with the information and the scientific background to pressure officials to put our little oil-eating friends to work for us on this horrendous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Please do what you can!   Every single letter, phone call, and fax can make a difference. Let’s put put the microbes to work and let nature and technology together for us.

Although we are absolutely interconnected with this planet and utterly dependent upon it, our planet’s fate has never been more in our own hands.

The future of the world is in our hands—what will we do?

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At a press conference today in Washington DC, researchers unveiled “First Light” images from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, a space telescope designed to study the sun.

“SDO is working beautifully,” reports project scientist Dean Pesnell of the Goddard Space Flight Center. “This is even better than we could have dreamed.”

An erupting prominence observed by SDO on March 30, 2010 Credit:SDO/AIA

“We’ve seen solar prominences before—but never quite like this,” says Alan Title of Lockheed Martin, principal investigator of the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA), the observatory’s main telescope array. “Some of my colleagues say they’ve learned new things about prominences just by watching this one movie.”

SDO is the first mission of NASA’s Living with a Star (LWS) program. The goal of LWS is to understand the sun as a magnetic variable star and to measure its impact on life and society on Earth. Program scientist Lika Guhathakurta of NASA headquarters envisions big things for the new observatory:

“SDO is our ‘Hubble for the sun’,” she says. “It promises to transform solar physics in the same way the Hubble Space Telescope has transformed astronomy and cosmology.”

To see stunning QuickTime movies go to:

First Light for the Solar Dynamics Observatory

To learn more about the Solar Dynamics Observatory, go here:

http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2010/05feb_sdo/

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Battling Male Rhinoceros Beetles

At least, beetles rule when it comes to the number of species.  Species of beetles constitute about 25% of all known life-forms on Earth. In the insect realm, 40% of all insect species are beetles, numbering about 350,000.  Every year, dozens of new species are discovered, and some believe the number of unclassified beetle species could be into the millions.

Beetles are classified in the order, Coleoptera. This term, first coined by Aristotle, means “sheathed wing,” as this beautiful Maybug beetle illustrates:

Maybug Beetle - Melolontha melolontha

Beetles comes in a staggering variety of forms:

Weevils - Liparus vs. Pissodes

Neotropical harlequin beetle - Acrocinus longimanus

Goliath Beetle - Goliathus albosignatus - photo by Milan Ilnycky

Pseudonemophas versteegi

But of all the beetles, my favorite is the ferocious and well-named tiger beetle.

Meet the Amazing Tiger Beetle

The Fearsome Jaws of the Tiger Beetle - Igor Siwanowicz

The tiger beetles is just as ferocious as it looks, and got it’s name from how it hunts like a tiger.  It uses its huge eyes to locate and stalk its prey.  Once prey is spotted, the tiger beetle runs it down, pounces on it, and tears it to shreds with its huge sword-like mandibles.

Tiger beetles eat other beetles, flies, caterpillars, ants, grasshoppers, spiders and additional invertebrates.  And be warned: if you try to catch one with your hands, it will give you a very painful bite that draws blood!  (I speak from experience on this!)

As fearsome as they are, these miniature monsters are some of the most beautiful beetles in the world, and often come in brilliant colors:

Tiger Beetle - by Igor Siwanowicz

Tiger Beetle - Cicindela formosa

Six-spotted Green Tiger Beetle - by Janet Harper

Japanese Tiger Beetle - Cicindela japonica - by Richard Seaman

On Land, the Fastest Insect in the World

There are many bigger and stronger beetles than the tiger beetle.  What really sets the tiger beetle apart from other beetles is its speed. In the insect world, nothing runs faster on the ground. I can remember many a fruitless chase as a young boy in the Mojave Desert trying to catch one of these little speed demons. The only thing faster on the dunes was the Zerbra-tailed lizard, probably the fastest lizard in the world.

So, just how fast do these little monsters run? Cole Gilbert, a professor of entomology at Cornel, worked with some American tiger beetles that ran about 1.2 mph or .53 meters per second. That may not sound very fast, until you take into account the scale of the insect. Let’s compare the tiger beetle’s relative speed to that of the fastest human in the world.

The Fastest Human in the World

For our comparison, let’s use the fastest man in the word: Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt. During the 100 meter dash, he has reached the astonishing top speed of 12.27 m/s or 44.17 km/hr (27.3 mph).

Usain Bolt - runs 6 body lengths per second at top speed

Since Bolt is 1.96 metres (6 ft 5 in) tall, at top speed he is covering over 6 times his body length every second! In other words, Bolt can run 6 bl/s. Pretty impressive! But now let’s compare Bolt’s relative speed to that of Dr. Gilbert’s tiger beetle.

The Tiger Beetle’s Astonishing Speed Relative to Its Size

The species of tiger beetle that Gilbert’s studied is 10 millimeters long, not quite half an inch. At top speed, the beetle is moving 1.2 mph or .53 meters a second. That means the little beetle is ripping along at 53 body lengths a second, almost 9 times as fast as Bolt in relative terms.

In other words, the relative speed of a human-sized tiger beetle running at 53 bl/s would over 240 mph!  Imagine a 200-pound tiger chasing you that could run faster than Dale Earnhardt’s race car!

Dale Earnhardt's Stock Car

But Dr. Gilbert’s tiger beetle is far from being the relative speed champ. That title belongs to Australian tiger beetle, Cicindela eburneola (subgenus Rivacindela). This amazing insect runs 1.86 m/s (4.16 mph) or an incredible 171 bl/s!

To convert this tiger beetle’s astonishing relative speed into human terms: a Usain Bolt-sized tiger beetle moving at 171 body lengths per second would be moving at about 1097 feet per second or approximately 748 mph! This speed would break sound barrier at sea level (732 mph)! And it would only be a little slower than the Thrust SSC (SuperSonic Car) which went 1,228 km/h (763 mph) breaking the sound barrier at a higher altitude.

Thrust SSC- top speed 763 mph

[Qualification - Yes, there is another Australian tiger beetle that's even faster in terms of absolute speed. The species Cicindela hudsoni can reach a top speed of 2.5 m/s or 5.6 mph.  However, being a larger insect, C. hudsoni's relative speed is "only" 120 bl/s, which translates to a relative speed of "only" 520 mph, merely the cruising speed of a passenger jet!]

Of course, the land animal holding the absolute speed record is the amazing cheetah. As I explained in a previous post, it’s can explode to 65 mph in just 3 seconds, faster than a 660 horsepower Ferrari!

See: Drag Race—Cheetah Takes on a Ferrari!

The Tiger Beetle—So Fast It Goes Blind!

Clearly, whether you consider absolute or relative speed, the tiger beetle is one fast insect. If you’re a small insect and the tiger beetle spots you, and you can’t fly away or hide, you are doomed. You aren’t going to outrun those ferocious jaws of death.

Tiger Beetle - Cicindela hybrida - by Richard Bartz

Unless….the tiger beetle is running so fast he doesn’t even see you, because it’s virtually blind!

Dr. Cole Gilbert - entomologist at Cornell University

As Dr. Gilbert explains, “If the tiger beetles move too quickly, they don’t gather enough photons (illumination into the beetle’s eyes) to form an image of their prey. Now, it doesn’t mean they are not receptive. It just means that at their speed during the chase, they’re not getting enough photons reflected from the prey to make an image and locate the prey. That is why they have to stop, look around and go. Although it is temporary, they go blind.”

Imagine being able to run so fast that things go dark at top speed , because your eyes aren’t getting enough light and the visual info is coming in faster than your brain can process! That, my friends, is fast! When you consider the relative speed of tiger beetles, it makes sense. If we could sprint to near the speed of sound in seconds, no doubt our eyes and brains would be unable to process what we saw too!

When I watched tiger beetles hunt on sand dunes in the Mojave desert, I was always amazed and puzzled by their stop and start behavior. In a blink of an eye, they’d take off, become a blur, stop in an instant, and then zoom off again. It wasn’t until decades later that I learned the science behind this interesting herky-jerky behavior.

The Summer, Look for Tiger Beetles!

Tigers beetles are found throughout the world, and there are more than a hundred species in the United States. They typically live along sea and lake shores, on sand dunes, around dried lakebeds, and on woodland paths. They are particularly fond of sandy surfaces.

Tiger beetle - Lophyra sp

This summer, keep an eye open for these amazing speed-demon predators. Tiger beetles aren’t huge, but there’s no mistaking their beautiful coloration, their bulging eyes, and those incredible jaws. No beetle or insect on the ground will be moving as fast.  And when you see them stop and start in bursts of speed, you’ll know why: these amazing beetles run so fast, they go blind and have to stop to see where they are!

If you’re an insect being chased by a tiger beetle, you’d better hope you can hide or fly away during that very brief blind period, because you’ll never outrun this speed king of insects!

Tiger Beetle - Cicindela hybrida - by Richard Bartz

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If you love nature and enjoy amazing images from nature, stop by my Berkeley, Naturally! nature blog and take a look at my new post about my discovery of several hundred thousand ladybugs amassed in the Berkeley Hills near my home. The post is called:

They are the Lady(bugs) of the Canyon

I’ve got some good images, though the huge swarm was too spread-out to catch on camera without making the ladybugs disappear in the dense foliage of Strawberry Canyon.  I had to settle for close-ups like these:

As usual, I also include some fun science about these amazing creatures and discuss the folklore around this most popular insect in the world.

Also, don’t miss the link to an amazing video of a ladybug swarm that will give you some idea of what it was like to see what I saw in person!

Stop by Berkeley, Naturally! and have a look!

Fastest Land Animal That's Ever Lived

But just as amazing as the cheetah’s top speed is its incredible acceleration. To demonstrate, we are going to set up an imaginary race between a cheetah and one of my all-time favorite supercars, the Ferrari Enzo:

Ferrari Enzo

The Enzo’s 6.0 L V-12 engine produces a brutal 660 hp!  And all that horsepower is wrapped in a gorgeous chassis and body weighing only 3,000 lbs. The Enzo’s top speed is 218 mph (360 km/h). The Enzo covers the ¼ mile (~400 m) in just 11.0 secs at which point it is going 136 mph (219 km/h)!

(To auto buffs – yes, I know there are now faster production supercars than the Enzo!  Although there’s some debate, many consider the SSC Ultimate Aero to be the fastest production car in the world. It has almost twice the horsepower of the Enzo, an astonishing 1183 hp!)

Top Dog - SSC Ultimate Aero

So, the cheetah/Ferrari race should be no contest, right? Well, since this is animal against machine, and since we know the cheetah’s top speed is about 75 mph, let’s make this race a sprint.

Since the time it takes a car to go from 0-60 mph (97 km/h) has long been a standard performance benchmark, let’s have the cheetah and Enzo race to 60 mph, and see who wins.

The Set-Up

First, we’ll set up a special drag strip. On one side, we’ll have some nice sticky tarmac for the huge tires of the Enzo to bite into with its 660 hp. And for the cheetah, we’ll have some nice packed earth—not too soft, but just-right for the cheetah’s non-tractable claws to dig in.

To get the cheetah’s to run full-speed, further down the track we have a mechanical antelope for it to chase, like the mechanical hare at a greyhound race track. (By the way, the greyhound, the fastest of all canines, can attain a top speed of 40 mph (65 km/h).

Greyhounds Can Reach 40 mph (Image - Lisa Poole)

OK, our racers are lined up. The Enzo sounds ferocious, as the driver, blips the throttle, and the V12 effortlessly spins up just shy of its maximum 8,000 rpm. The cheetah seems utterly focused on the mechanical antelope, it’s incredible muscles flexing powerfully under it’s beautiful spotted fur.

Three, two, one….they’re off!

The Ferrari gets the green light at the same moment the mechanical antelope takes off. The race is on!

The Enzo driver has to be careful; with all that horsepower, even the massive tires of the Ferrari will go up in smoke if he just floors it. But the driver is a pro, and the Enzo explodes off the starting line….

One-thousand one!

Only to find that in just 1 second, the cheetah is already yards ahead and is pulling away! In just three strides, the cheetah is already going 40 mph!  The Enzo isn’t even out of 1st gear!

The Cheetah's Explosive Acceleration

One-thousand two!

The Enzo’s engine howl’s like a banshee as it revs to 8,000 rpm and its full 660 hp. The Enzo’ semi-automatic transmission has a shift time of just 150 milliseconds, and it rips through 1st and into 2nd gear in the blink of eye.

Yet incredibly, in just over 2 seconds, the cheetah is already going nearly 55 mph! The cheetah’s lead actually grows. The amazing cat’s legs are a blur. Its incredibly flexible spine acts like a giant uncoiling spring with each bound of the cheetah’s powerful legs.

As the cheetah runs, only one foot at a time touches the ground. There are two points, in its 20 to 25 foot (7-8 metres) stride when no feet touch the ground, as they are fully extended and then totally doubled up. Nearing full speed, the cheetah is running at about 3 strides per second.  It will pass 60 mph well under 3 seconds!

One-thousand three!

The cheetah has already blown by 60 mph and is now going 64-65 mph. The cheetah wins!

At three seconds, the Ferrari is still just shy of 60 mph and still catching up. But now its acceleration is far greater than the cheetah’s, and in another half a second or so, the 660 hp red missile finally blows by the cheetah, who has now hit its maximum 75 mph.

Amazing, no? Scientists have measured cheetahs accelerating to 64-65 mph in just 3 seconds. It takes an Enzo Ferrari 3.65 seconds to get to 64 mph—nearly a second more! When it comes to pure acceleration from a standing start, the cheetah can embarrass million dollar supercars.

Gary Larson

(The world’s fastest production car, the 1183 horsepower SSC Ultimate Aero, mentioned above, does 0-60 in just 2.78 seconds. By my calculations, this acceleration just might tie the cheetah’s acceleration.  If the Aero is faster, it’s not by much, since in 3 seconds the cheetah is already doing 64-65 mph. Perhaps the 4-wheel drive, $1.7 million Bugatti Veyron, which does 0-60 in 2.5 seconds could best the Cheetah.  But, I wouldn’t bet on it!)

Cheetah to Bugatti Veyron: "Go ahead, make my day!"

Meet the King of Speed

The King of Speed

The cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus) is an unusual cat, and not just because of its unparalleled speed. Although it is a member of the cat family (Felidae) it lacks climbing abilities and has semi-retractable claws that look more like a dog’s than a cat’s. These unusual cat claws give it great traction for running but are useless for escaping enemies up trees.

Unlike “true” big cats (lions, tigers, jaguars, leopards), the cheetah can purr as it inhales, but cannot roar. By contrast, the big cats can roar but cannot purr, except while exhaling.

Compared to lions, the cheetah is not a large predator. Cheetahs stand 67 to 94 cm (26 to 37 in) high at the shoulder.  The largest adult cheetah might weigh 36 to 65 kg (140-150 pounds), while a male lion can be 250 kg (550 lb) in body weight.

"The cheetah may be fast, but I'm still the KING."

Cheetahs range in body length from from 115 to 135 cm (45 to 53 in). The long, beautiful tail, which the cheetah uses like a rudder to make sharp turns during a chase, can measure up to 84 cm (33 in) in length.

"And I can turn faster than a Ferrari too! (Image - Kevin Clifford)

Cheetahs are built for one thing—speed. Compared to other big cats, their head is small and they lack the powerful jaws and fang-like canine teeth. They are built to run, not fight, and can fall prey to lions, leopards, and even hyenas. Their only defense it to run.

Because the cheetah is not a big cat, and because cheetahs tend to be solitary, the sad fact is that up to 90% of cheetah cubs are killed by lions, leopards, hyenas, wild dogs, or even by eagles.

Cheetah Cubs Face a Tough Life

This high infant mortality rate, combined with genetic problems caused by severe inbreeding, and environmental pressures, means that cheetahs, as a species, are living right on the edge. They are considered a vulnerable or endangered species by most conservation organizations.

Cheetah Cubs at Play

There are probably only nine to twelve thousand cheetahs alive in the world. The largest single population is to be found in Namibia, in extreme southwestern Africa, where there are about twenty-five hundred cheetahs. (Namibia is apparently the only country in the world that includes protection of its environment and native wildlife in its constitution.)

Cheetahs do not breed well in captivity. Although there have been sporadic successes, by and large the population in zoos is not self-sustaining. Groups like the Cheetah Conservation Fund (CCF)

Cheetah Conservation Fund

http://www.cheetah.org/

are working to save the cheetah, and South Africa’s De Wildt Cheetah Breeding Center is the one notable exception in terms of successful cheetah breeding.

De Wildt Cheetah and Wildlife Centre

Mother Cheetah and Cubs

What a tragedy it would be to lose the cheetah, arguably the fastest land animal that’s ever lived on our amazing “pale blue dot” of a planet.

Like so many other species on land and in the oceans, the cheetah faces a bleak future unless we human beings fundamentally change the way we relate to our planet and its animals, plants, and ecosystems.

Fascinating Cheetah Factsheet from CCF (click for PDF)

Cheetah sets new fastest land animal record

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