Wayne Bozowski, age 11, of Calgary, Alberta, Canada, for his question:

Can a man outrun a horse?

This, naturally, depends on which man is racing which horse. Most likely, a good runner could beat the old grey mare from here to there. Most likely you could outdistance a pig headed pony if the race were headed away from his hay. However, an average horse can outrun an average man and a race horse of Secretariat's caliber would leave a champion Olympic runner behind in a cloud of dust.

A champion race horse can run about three times faster than a man. The fastest horses run a mile in about one and one third minutes and the fastest human runners cover the same distance in slightly less than four minutes. However, no doubt a champion human runner could outdistance a weary old farm horse.

Throughout the world of nature, survival depends on speed or artful dodging or a combination of both. All the animals on land, in the air and in the sea are hunters or hunted    and many are both. In the bird world, the contests usually are in the air, where speed is more important than artful dodging.

Here the champions are eagles, hawks and other birds of prey that must be able to fly faster than their victims. The handsome peregrine falcon plummets down from on high to capture his prey    at speeds that reach 100 miles per hour. The mighty golden eagle can reach 80 miles per hour    which is plenty fast enough to capture the fastest wild ducks, who fly in the 60 to 70 mph range.

In the sea, survival often goes to the fastest swimmers. The champ is most likely the handsome sailfish, who can reach almost 50 miles per hour. A big tuna fish can plow into a school of herring at more than 40 miles per hour. A big ocean going turtle is going all out at 20 miles per hour, which is almost as fast as a speeding blue balleen whale. In the water, a fairly good human swimmer dawdles behind with the polar bear, at about five miles per hour.

On land, we tend to think that the fastest animal on four feet is a champion race horse. Not so. An ostrich can match his speed over a short distance, so can a fox or a bouncy hare. Most gazelles can outrun him and even the gauky looking gnu can beat him by a nose. The fastest four footer seems to be the spotted cheetah, who uses both stealth and speed to catch one of those frisky gazelles. With catty caution he creeps up as close as possible    then makes his short dash to his dinner at perhaps 70 miles per hour. Naturally, all the animals that can outrun a horse can outdistance the fastest two footed man.

However, though not the fastest, man is not the slowest.  When it comes to two footers, he can match for short distances the speed of a striding emu or a sassy roadrunner. He can outrun a sheep or a champion racing camel. But he cannot run quite as fast as a little house cat in a hurry.