The broader lines are marking distances of 1 cm, the smaller ones of 1 mm.
In the experiment the travelling time for one millimeter racetrack
was measured and the respective velocity calculated.
The tardigrades had to be watched for rather long periods of time as they
didn't run straight forward as hoped by the investigators and sometimes didn't
venture to move at all.
The results of the measurements were as follows: Eutardigrades, i.e. tardigrades
without armour plates (as shown in the video) reached a maximum velocity
of 74.8 cm/h. This value is based on ten individual measurements
(of course the tardigrade will not walk straight across 74.8 cm in an hour as the maximum speed
was calculated for 1 mm distances only).
Heterotardigrades, i.e. tardigrades with armour plates, reached a maximum speed
of 13.3 cm/h . None of the Eutardigrades showed a similar low velocity.
The value reported here is based on four measurements. Possibly the armour plates
are not good for running?
Now let's come back to the initial topic and re-check whether the label "tardigrade"
is justified or not. For this sake we are going to compare the fastest tardigrade
with the fasted man on Earth: Usain Bolt measures 195 cm in height.
This is equivalent to 1,950,000 µm. The tardigrade length can be specified as 600 µm.
This means that Usain Bolt is 3,250 times bigger than the tardigrade.
In order to compete with Usain Bolt in Usain Bolt's body size our fastest tardigrade would
have to cross the 3,250 fold pathway, i.e. 243.100 cm/h which equals 2.4 km/h.
But we know from Usain Bolt's world record that he is actually running with
a speed of 38 km/h. So it must be admitted that even our fastest tardigrade is
much slower than Usain Bolt, possibly not even a fast walker, just a leasurely walker!
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