Think Fast: Falcon vs. Thought

Photo from Pixabay user "70154"

Watch out!  There’s an animal alive on Earth right now that moves faster than you can blink.  Possibly faster than you can even think to blink!

Death from above

What amazing creature is this?  Presenting the peregrine falcon, the fastest-traveling creature known to science.  Although the adored cheetah gets more fame for its fastest-running-speed ability, it is the falcon, unhampered by having to move any of its feet across the ground, that really gets up some speed. 

Peregrine falcons can rival a cheetah for straightaway speed even when they’re just flying along on a horizontal trajectory.  But when the falcon hunts with its famous nose-dive technique – called stooping – it more than quadruples its flat-flight speed.

Hunting in this fashion, the falcon spies its prey – usually a medium-size bird in flight – either from a lofty perch or while up high in flight.  The falcon then goes into its stoop, streamlining its body to cut through the air before striking its prey with sufficient force to stun or kill it on impact. 

How fast is that?  A certain peregrine falcon named Frightful has been clocked at 242 mph during her stoop, and it is possible that she could go even faster.  (Some sources claim that peregrines have been clocked at 273 mph but sadly, their citations are absent…we’ll have to stick with the substantiated speed for now.  But still do consider that Frightful might not have been in a big rush that day!)

Now here’s the really cool part – that’s about as fast as we humans can think.

Think fast!

When someone says “think fast,” just how fast are we talking about?  What is the actual speed of thought?

Here’s the quick scoop on thinking: neurons are the cells that transmit information through our nervous system, so when I complain that I “have brain cells dedicated” to the likes of theme songs from 80s sitcoms, I’m talking about neurons.  Neurons transmit signals via chemical and electrical signals.  When a neuron gets an electric memo, it’s passed along via an electrical impulse known as an action potential.

According to a handy write-up by the National Institutes of Health, “the fastest action potentials can travel the length of a football field in 1 second.”  100 yards in 1 second – that’s 205 mph.  Falcon’s faster.

But wait, there’s more.  The “speed of thought” actually differs wildly depending on how we define “thought” and which cells come into play. 

Some nerve cells are myelinated, which means they have a coating that allows electrical signals to travel faster along their length.  Some neurons are not mylinated, as is the case with many in the brain.  The fastest signal speeds seem to occur along myelinated cells in the spinal column, allowing a message like “that surface is hot!” to get to the brain for further advisement (“pull back!”) really quickly.  Messages just between brain cells – straight up “thinking,” if you will, appear to move much more slowly (although bear in mind the distance between brain cells is really small compared to the distance from brain to toe.)

Here’s a rundown of the variations in our information processing speeds:

To assure us that our body can send some signals faster than a falcon can fly, it’s sources including DiscoverMagazine to the rescue, reporting nerve impulses reaching 268 mph – although that 268 mph is for spinal cord signals (and I haven’t been able to locate the original study even though that stat is quoted by numerous sources.)  At the low end, we have the sensory receptors in our skin which fire off at a paltry 1 mph.

In our brain itself, within the non-myelinated grey matter where thought-making neurons reside, the impulse transmission speed starts off at around 0.5 m/s …which is 1 mph.  Inner-brain impulses have been recorded as reaching 67 mph.

So depending on whether we’re defining “thinking” as something like “sensing and reacting” or more like “daydreaming,” our falcon might possibly be slower, in terms of mph, but for the most part (and especially if we look only at in-brain notion creation,) the bird’s got us beat. 

Dodge, pigeon!

While the speed comparison between thought and a falcon’s dive makes for a really cool statistic, in practical application it doesn’t mean the falcon is going to succeed every time because the bird has a lot farther to travel than its victims’ thoughts have to go.  Still, when you have to then translate the thought into action, you might feel like you’re stuck in molasses, if you happen to be the one trying to dodge the falcon’s dive.

It seems that a falcon’s target is in a whole lot of trouble once the raptor’s locked on.  As it turns out, a targeted pigeon does stand a chance if it sees the falcon coming from a long ways off.  Fast as they may be, many peregrine pursuits do not result in a catch, as is generally the case with all kinds of animal hunters.  Still, to quote D. Dekker from his report on peregrine hunting success, “The great majority of prey seen to be caught failed in the timely use of escape tactics routinely deployed by their kind.”

I just picture some poor shore bird scrambling in a panic, wide eyed, flinging its morning paper and coffee hither and yon amid a flurry of feathers.  And I bet the falcon moves faster than my synapses can fire before I’ve had the morning’s first cup of coffee.  Good thing I don’t look like a pigeon.

In the blink of an eye

After some unsuccessful hunting, let’s let the esteemed falcon regain some clout in the speed department by seeing what they can accomplish “in the blink of an eye.”  What can they do while you blink?  Travel about 115 feet, that’s what, because a falcon’s diving speed is way faster than your blinking speed.

Numerous reports on blinking speed agree that the average blink lasts about 300-400 milliseconds, so about three blinks per second.  Lacking published statistics on the eyelids’ travel distance, I used my own eyes as the basis for my calculations (I’m pretty average, right?), so we’re looking at a half inch between eyelids, making a full blink equivalent to an inch of travel.  A travel speed of three inches per second works out to a paltry .17 mph.

So now you have a new bit of small talk party trivia in your arsenal: eyelids move at .17 mph!  In case it ever comes up.  And if you ever notice a peregrine falcon is diving at you from about 115 feet away, just close your eyes and brace for impact.