Maximum relative speeds of living organisms: Why do bacteria perform as fast as ostriches?

@article{MeyerVernet2016MaximumRS,
  title={Maximum relative speeds of living organisms: Why do bacteria perform as fast as ostriches?},
  author={Nicole Meyer‐Vernet and Jean-Pierre Rospars},
  journal={Physical Biology},
  year={2016},
  volume={13}
}
Self-locomotion is central to animal behaviour and survival. It is generally analysed by focusing on preferred speeds and gaits under particular biological and physical constraints. In the present paper we focus instead on the maximum speed and we study its order-of-magnitude scaling with body size, from bacteria to the largest terrestrial and aquatic organisms. Using data for about 460 species of various taxonomic groups, we find a maximum relative speed of the order of magnitude of ten body… 
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