...is also the fastest, and one of the smallest: The 1-millimeter long copepod is, pound for pound, the beefiest beast in the animal kingdom.
Professor Thomas Kiørboe, from the National Institute of Aquatic Resources at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU Aqua), has discovered that the naturally blind copepod got so proportionally strong — and numerous; there are more copepods than any other species — by running away. According to Kiørboe:
"The copepods' evolutionary success should be seen in relation to their ability to flee from predators. Their escape jump is hugely powerful and effective... They jump at a rate of half a meter per second, and that's within a few thousandths of a second. It shows that copepods — in relation to their size — are more than 10 times as strong as has been previously documented for any other animal or even man-made motors."
Which means that a comic starring Copepod-Man is just around the corner. Right?