The Common Swift Is No Longer the Fastest-Flying Animal (2024)

The Common Swift has officially lost its crownas thefastest-flying animal in the sky. So who took the title? The PeregrineFalcon? Afrigatebird? Perhaps theGrey-headed Albatross? None of the above. The answer mightsurprise you, because according to the latest research, the fastest flierin the animal kingdom isn't a bird at all. It'sabat.

Butfirst, some background: The Peregrine Falcon is indisputably the fastest animal in the sky. It has been measured at speedsabove 83.3 m/s(186 mph), but only when stooping, ordiving. So for many years,it was commonly held by scientiststhat the fastest-flying bird in level flight was the White-throated Needletail (formerly known as the Spine-tailed Swift), which couldsupposedly reachspeeds of up to 47m/s (105 mph). That number, however,hadnever been scientifically proven.

It turns out that measuring the speed of animalsin flight is actually fairly difficult, and it wasn’t until 2009 that a research team from Lund University in Sweden used high-speed cameras to scientifically measure what they believed to be the fastest flieron the planet, the Common Swift. At a scientifically verifiable 31m/s (69 mph), achieved during mating flights (also known as “screaming parties”), the swift was named the fastest pair of wings in the world. It held that title for seven years, but earlier this month scientists published apapercrowning a new fastest flier:the Brazilian free-tailed bat.

The accepted knowledge about bats in flight is that because of a lower mass-to-wing-area ratio and a less aerodynamic body shape, they are slower but more maneuverable fliers than birds. Like the speed of the White-throated Needletail, this wasone of those “facts” that had never actually been verified. By using a small airplane, tricky piloting,and some clever triangulation to follow bats tagged with radio transmitters, aresearch team was able to measure female bats flying at almost 45 m/s (99.5 mph), which is almost 50 percentfaster than the Common Swift’s record. This was a surprising result for everyone, including the scientists performing the study, and we can likely expect to hear about a lot more research into bat flight characteristics in the near future.

Swift fans(not thiskind)disappointed at the dethroning of their champion cantake solace in the fact that the Common Swift still holds the record forlongest continuous flight. There is no indication that bats are anywhere close to taking that record from them anytime soon.