Going for the Gold…with Paws, Flippers, and Wings

The world’s best athletes have converged on Torino, Italy to compete in the XX Olympic Winter Games and show off their skills in everything from ski jumping to biathlons. Compared to the rest of the human race, these athletes may not have much competition in the categories of strongest or fastest, most daring or most precise. But match their feats with those of the rest of the animal kingdom, and they’ve got some serious rivalry!

We did a roundup of some of our strongest contestants from the four WCS zoos and the aquarium in New York, and here’s what we found:

Great horned owl Snickers the Sneak from Prospect Park Zoo may be a lightweight, but don’t let that deceive you. Though this unsuspecting Olympian tips the scales at only two to four pounds, he can carry prey weighing two to three times as much in his large talons. Like all birds that go “hoot” in the night, the great horned owl is an excellent hunter, going after rabbits and rodents, muskrats and moles, turkeys and pigeons, and many other species on its silent wings. With excellent precision, these birds spot prey from high perches, then dive down to the ground with wings folded before snatching their victims.

We’d nominate Snickers for the biathlon—a mix of riflery and cross-country skiing that is a challenging combination of exertion and precision, and a sport originally devised as a hunting technique.

Wingfooted puma Cleo from Queens Zoo is a born jumper. Her muscular hind legs and flexible spine catapult her off the ground so that she can ambush prey in the trees—or, watermelons at the Zoo, which the keepers dangle from branches above. In fact, mountain lions can make vertical leaps of 15 feet up or down hillsides, and can bound up to 45 feet across horizontal distances. Pumas are athletic in many ways—they are also built to sprint, and can reach speeds of 40 miles per hour in less than 50 feet.

Sure, Olympic ski jumpers reach heights of 120 meters (394 feet) when they leap into the void from the Individual Large Hill. But while these athletes have mastered the art of the steep descent, the spring in Cleo’s step is unmatched by us two-legged creatures.

Heavyweight Blizzard the polar bear from the Bronx Zoo may not immediately appear to possess Olympian-grade grace and agility, but a closer look at his lumbering body reveals the physique of a gold-medal athlete. With his large, fur-covered paws that serve as snowshoes, he could walk miles across snow and ice, and his webbed toes help propel him through water. In the Arctic, these aquatic champions can swim up to 40 miles across the open sea without a break, traveling at an amazing speed of four miles per hour. It is estimated that in its lifetime, an individual polar bear may cover an area of 100,000 square miles.

The demanding physical stamina required to travel across the Arctic is a lot like what it takes to be a cross-country skier racing across the snowy landscape in classical or freestyle stride. And both skiers and polar bears require a lot of the same thing: food. For bears, about two kilograms (nearly one pound) of fat each day helps them stay warm in frigid conditions; cross country skiers prepare for the hard slog by carbo-loading, eating 2600-3600 calories of carbohydrates in a diet of 4000-6000 calories a day.

Silo “The Torpedo” chinstrap from Central Park Zoo is a penguin with a mission. With his paddle-shaped wings, powerful flight muscles, and streamlined body, he can swim through the water at speeds up to 15 miles per hour—quadruple the speed of the fastest human swimmer—and cover long distances. Moving across land on two feet, penguins appear much less graceful, but when they tire of the waddle, they simply drop onto their bellies, sliding toboggan-style across the ice and snowfields. This allows them to conserve energy on the long march toward their inland breeding grounds, while still moving relatively quickly.

If only the chinstraps could learn to use a sled, they’d make great candidates for skeleton sledding—a face-first plunge down an icy track that requires a combination of aerodynamic agility and sheer gall.

Rockstar Roxie the northern fur seal at the New York Aquarium is an aquatic acrobat who makes swimming look like flying. Somersaulting and gliding through the water, fur seals are superb swimmers, using their long front flippers to propel them forward and their hind flippers for steering. They are capable of traveling more than 6,000 miles to and from breeding grounds—the longest annual trip of any pinniped species. When hunting for fish, playful fur seals make both deep and shallow dives, spinning, back-flipping, and plunging to depths of 200 to 600 feet.

Fur seals are pelagic—meaning they spend most of their time in the open oceans—and so they rest at sea by “jug handling.” This term refers to a pose by which the seals hold their front flippers over their rear flippers above the water to keep warm, while bobbing on the surface. When graceful Roxie folds herself up into the jug-handle position, it may bring to mind a figure skater doing a standing split!

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