Talk about your mighty mites!

Mite Paratarsotomus macropalpis is World’s Fastest Terrestrial Animal, Study Says

Apr 28, 2014 by Sci-News.com

The Southern California erythracarid mite species, Paratarsotomus macropalpis, which is smaller than sesame seed, can run up to 322 body lengths per second, according to a study led by biologist Samuel Rubin of Pitzer College, Claremont. The previous record-holder, the Australian tiger beetle, can run at 171 body lengths per second. By comparison, a cheetah running at 100 km per hour attains only 16 body lengths per second.

Paratarsotomus macropalpis. Image credit: Grace C. Wu et al. 2010. The Journal of Experimental Biology; doi: 10.1242/jeb.024463.

“It’s so cool to discover something that’s faster than anything else, and just to imagine, as a human, going that fast compared to your body length is really amazing,” said Mr Rubin, who is the first author of a paper published in the FASEB Journal.

Paratarsotomus macropalpis is a large (up to 0.7 mm long) mite belonging to the family Anystidae. It has long legs and a body nearly twice as long as broad.

This species is an endemic to California, the United States, and often found running along rocks or sidewalks.

Mr Rubin, his advisor Prof Jonathan Wright of Pomona College, and their colleagues used high frame-rate video cameras to record the mites’ sprints in the lab and in their natural environment.
They were very surprised to find that the Paratarsotomus macropalpis’ speed is equivalent to a human running roughly 2,100 km per hour. [That's just over 1300 miles per hour.]

They were also surprised to find the mites running on concrete up to 60 degrees Celsius, a temperature significantly higher than the upper lethal temperature of most animals. [Yeah, like 140 Fahrenheit!]

“They’re operating at temperatures that seem to preclude activities of any other animal group. We’ve seen them running where there were no other animals visibly active,” Prof Wright said.

The mites also are adept at stopping and changing directions extremely quickly, attributes the researchers are investigating further for potential insights that may be relevant to bioengineering applications.