5 Small-Ass Animals With Huge-Ass Powers

But sometimes trillions of them will come together to form huge oceanic swarms, and that's when things get serious. See, thanks to the salps' ability to grow as much as 10 percent of their body length per hour, one of those clusters can reach 38,600 square miles. That's like 18,500,000 football fields, or just about the size of South Korea. Ordinarily, this would be the point we start panicking and advocate ill-advised but enthusiastic napalm deployment, but Salps do something pretty cool: They consume carbon dioxide.

The oceans actually absorb a lot of CO2 from the atmosphere, where it's eventually eaten by phytoplankton (organisms even tinier than salps) before being released back into the air when the animals die. Salps help with that by eating the phytoplankton themselves, and pooping out the CO2 in pellets that sink to the bottom, where the gas can't warm up the planet and or/be dismissed as a liberal conspiracy.

Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife
"When's the last time your poop caused anything but tears and despair?"

Pilobolus is a near-microscopic cannon capable of shooting its spores (those little black "hats") further than six feet when it reproduces. This would be like a guy of average height standing on the ground and ejaculating so hard that his sperm nails the top of the Empire State Building. Please don't try this, by the way.

Pilobolus spores accelerate faster than an actual rocket. 42,500 times faster, to be exact. That's 1.7 million meters per second squared. That technically makes the hat-thrower the fastest organism/orgasmer on the planet, because their cumshots clock in at roughly 55 miles per hour.

Nancy Magnusson /Flickr
Oddjob doesn't even throw his hat that fast.

Human ejaculation, on the other hand, doesn't quite break 30mph -- although frankly, that still sounds pretty awesome. We fire little dudes so fast they'd get a speeding ticket.

In a school zone.

But still!

The snipe undertakes an annual migration from Northern Europe to Sub-Saharan Africa -- 4,200 miles -- and it does the whole journey in one non-stop two-day trip, averaging 60mph. Now, while they are amazed at the birds' journey, scientists are generally confused about why the great snipe is in such a hurry. Unlike other far-flying birds that cross oceans (and have no place to stop), the chubby snipe's migratory route is mostly over land. There is literally no reason they don't stop to rest along the way.

They just live their lives a quarter mile at a time.

The mighty mite travels an astounding 322 body lengths per second (compared with the cheetah's measly 16). Now, due to the mites' minuscule size, that only comes out to about 0.5 miles per hour -- but if the mite was the size of Usain Bolt, it would hit nearly Mach 2. Most animals that hit crazy high speeds do so at the cost of maneuverability, but not the mighty mite. On the end of the mite's third leg, there's a barb that functions like an adorable grappling hook -- allowing it to change orientation by up to 1253 degrees per second. You may have seen this trick before -- on the mothafuggin' Batmobile.

Journal of Experimental Biology
"Na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-NIGHTMARES!"

Also check out 5 Tiny Animals That Deserve Their Own Horror Movie and The 6 Deadliest Creatures (That Can Fit In Your Shoe).

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