ANIMAL JUMPERS: WHO ARE THE CHAMPS?
Editorial Department
Scholastic Inc.
Scholastic News
2931 East McCarty St.
P.O. Box 3710
Jefferson City, Missouri
65102-3710
Marion Sudvarg
4 Ranch Lane
Saint Louis, Missouri
63131
Phone: (314) 966-2167
October 28, 2000
Dear Scholastic News editors,
In one of the articles of your Vol. 63, No. 3, Edition 4 (September 18, 2000), on page 2 you stated that a grasshopper is proportionally the best jumper in the animal kingdom because it can jump 2 feet high and 4 feet forward. A grasshopper is, on average, about 1 inch long. There are 48 inches in 4 feet; thus, a grasshopper can jump about 48 times its length.
In the National Geographic, Vol. 173, No. 5 (May 1988), on page 673, it states that a flea can jump 150 times its own length. Therefore, proportionally a flea is a better jumper than a grasshopper—about three times better, if you simply do the math!
I thought you would like to know about this, and I would even suggest that you print a correction in a forthcoming issue of Scholastic News. I am not the only one who noted this small error.
Please do not take this letter as a general criticism. You can consider me a happy reader and a loyal subscriber.
Sincerely,
Marion Sudvarg
4th Grade
Westchester Elementary School
Saint Louis, Missouri
(Written 10-28-2000.)
(Posted 8-19-2013.)
(I lied. Now I confess. My son Marion did not write the above letter. I—Francis Baumli, Ph.D.—did. But we submitted it under his name, thinking that since he was a subscribing student, they would be more likely to publish it. But they didn’t. Which is a shame, since theirs was a considerable error, and they should have printed a correction.)