The story of the tortoise and the hare is an old and well-known fable! If you’ve never heard of it, here’s a quick synopsis.
“The story concerns a Hare who ridicules a slow-moving Tortoise. Tired of the Hare’s arrogant behavior, the Tortoise challenges him to a race. The hare soon leaves the tortoise behind and, confident of winning, takes a nap midway through the race. When the Hare awakes however, he finds that his competitor, crawling slowly but steadily, has arrived before him.” – Wikipedia
What’s the moral of the story?
It’s pretty simple and is a theme seen in a ton of fables and stories as old as time: trickery and laziness don’t help you reach your goals, determination and hard work do.
This story today isn’t really about the old fable, however!
In fact, it’s kind of a real-life scenario to see if that old fable holds water! One video shows a group of people who decided they were going to put a real tortoise and hare to the test and see who came out on top in a race.
On the surface, you would think that it wouldn’t really be close – you might be surprised!
On one hand, the average tortoise can run less than 1 mph. To be specific, a leopard tortoise tops out around .63 mph on a good day. The average hare, on the other hand, can easily reach speeds of around 40 mph! To make it plain, a hare is around 60x faster than a tortoise!
Even knowing that, these people wanted to put it to the test.
We aren’t exactly sure where these people are, but there is a massive crowd watching! Two people are at the start of the short track, each one holding one of the “competitors”. Over the speakers, a countdown starts and the animals are released!
Like the story, the hare leaps ahead with a huge lead!
The hare is clearly faster and rockets to the middle of the track with only a few short leaps. The tortoise has barely moved from his original spot and it looks like it’s going to be a blowout.
Suddenly, the hare stops in the middle of the track!
Almost exactly like the story, the hare seems to lose steam around the middle of the track. As the hare sits frozen in the middle, the slow and steady tortoise makes his lumbering steps towards the end!
Finally passing the hare, it looks like it’s going to swing the other way!
It’s a nail-biter finish between the two animals, and the crowd can’t wait to see the final outcome. They all cheer as they watch the two animals meander toward the finish line.
Check out the video below to see who wins the race!
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