A recent study performed at the Research Institute of Wildlife Ecology in Austria suggests that the right kind of fat can make mammals faster.

Mice fed on sunflower oil, with high levels of n-6 fatty acids, sprinted 6.3% faster than mice fed on linseed oil, which contains high levels of n-3 fatty acids. In a previous study the researchers found that a range of mammals with high n-6 fatty acid diets had higher maximum running speeds.

Improvements in running speed offer obvious advantages in eluding predators and catching prey, suggesting that animals with higher poly-unsaturated fat diets might have had an evolutionary advantage.

This research was presented at the Society for Experimental Biology Annual Meeting on June 29th. To visit the website for the Society for Experimental Biology click here.