Letter: Long and short of it

From Toby Pereira

In your article on ants’ swimming skills, the measure used is how many body lengths an ant can cover per second (14 June, p 18).

However, it is well known that under crude measures such as this, small animals always outperform large animals.

A common example of this limited usefulness is measuring fleas’ jumping ability in body lengths, a criteria that no large animal could ever hope to match.

Statistical work on body size versus performance would need to be done to find a fairer and more relevant measure.
Rayne, Essex, UK