Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio, Hey brain Stuff, Lauren bog Obam Here. When it comes to fictional animals capable of breaking the sound barrier, there's no beating Sonic the hedgehog. But would he be able to survive his own super swiftness. Sonic is the star of the long running Sega video game franchise and now a movie wherein he spins and rolls at breakneck speeds in order to defeat the evil doctor robot Nick. So how
fast do Sonic go? As his name implies, he reaches sonic speeds, meaning that he can travel as fast as a sound wave through Earth's atmosphere, which is roughly seven hundred and sixty seven miles per hour or one thousand, two hundred and thirty five kilometers per hour depending on air temperature. He also goes supersonic under the right circumstances, so it's probably safe to assume that he exceeds the speed of sound as well. That's incredibly fast. Most hedgehogs
do get around. They're extremely active in the wild and often run several miles each night, which are regular hedgehog business hours, but sonic speeds are much faster. Consider that the world's fastest organism, the Peregrine falcon, only reaches a maximum speed of about two hundred miles per hour or three kilometers first sustained speeds. The Cheetah is Sonic's closest rival, at a mere seventy miles per hour or a d ten kilometers. Sonic smokes them both. So could Sonic realistically
handle supersonic speeds. Let's think about it. Humans routinely break the sound barrier in supersonic aircraft. Aboard the now discontinued Concorde, passengers could even enjoy an in flight meal. But this is all within the artificial confines of an airplane. All
Sonic has is his own body. His body would have to be incredibly strong and durable to achieve and survive the wear and tear of supersonic speeds, even if he's rolling through smooth tubes and shoots half the time at those speeds, small particles of dust and even the air
itself could cause serious damage. As author James Cacallios points out in the Physics of Superheroes, a super fast organism like the Flash would need superhaling abilities to rapidly recover from the physical damage of each acceleration, to say nothing of smashing into things. The same goes for sonic. But then again, if we're to assume that sonic species evolved to reach such high speeds, he must be sturdy enough
to survive it, at least in the short term. So perhaps he does have the sort of enhanced healing speeds necessary to keep all his bones and ligaments from snapping. As pointed out by Duke Universities patech Labs, various animals are capable of incredible speeds when it comes to parts of their anatomy, such as the mantis shrimps three millisecond
club strikes. There's even a hypothesis that prehistoric sauropods could have whipped their tails at sonic speed like a bull whip, but that remains rather controversial, and maybe we're being too hard on sonic. He's a blue hedgehog that chases coins across a pinball landscape and in later games achieves faster than light travel. Plus he's still going strong after almost thirty years, which for a hedgehog is almost as impressive as that speed. Today's episode was written by Robert Lamb
and produced by Tyler clang. For more on this and lots of other specific topics, visit how stuffworks dot com. Brain Stuff is production of I heart Radio or more podcasts in my heart Radio, visit the heart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,