Sue Mainka / IUCN

The cheetah can run more than twice as fast as the fastest human for short distances.

The Olympics is a time to celebrate the world's fastest and strongest humans, but you can rely on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature to put the best of human performance in perspective. They've just come out with their list of Olympians for the natural world — champions that range from the fleet cheetah to the humble fungus.

"While celebrating the achievements of talented athletes across the world this summer, we should also take the time to appreciate these incredible species," the IUCN says in today's Olympian roundup. Here are some of the conservation group's medalists for 2012:

Sprint: Cheetahs (Acinonyx jubatus) can bolt at 70 mph or more for short bursts, making them the world's fastest land animals. In comparison, Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt is credited as the fastest human, with a top running speed of 27.79 mph. Theoretically, humans could reach velocities of 40 mph — still short of the cheetah's personal best. 

High jump: To even things out, cross-species-wise, the IUCN is measuring jumping ability in terms of body length. By that measure, a lowly insect known as the common froghopper (Philaenus spumarius) gets the high-jump crown. It can jump 115 times its body length, while the record for humans is just a little over 8 feet (2.45 meters). That's about 1.25 times the height of the record-holder, Cuba's Javier Sotomayor (6-foot-5 or 195 centimeters).

Joelle Dufour / IUCN

The rhinoceros beetle can lift 30 times its own weight.

Weightlifting: The IUCN's winner here is the rhinoceros beetle (Megasoma elephas), which can lift more than 30 times its body mass. In comparison, the IUCN notes that the heaviest individual weight lifted by a human in an Olympic competition was 580.9 pounds (263.5 kilograms), a record set by Iran's Hossein Rezazadeh. His weight as of 2007 is listed as 340 pounds (152 kilograms), which means the poor guy couldn't even lift a mass twice his own weight.

Archery: The smallscale archerfish (Toxotes microlepis) can shoot down land-based insects (flying insects or insects on branches) and other small animals with water shot from their specialized mouths.

Boxing: The mating season for the European hare (Lepus europaeus) peaks in the spring, during a time called “March Madness.” Females choose their partners according to their strength by "boxing" with them — when females and males stand on their hind legs and hit each other with their paws. As females are slightly larger than males, only the strong males impress the females and get the chance to mate. Survival of the fittest: the true gold medal. 

Gymnastics: In the animal world, it's hard to beat the agile gibbon (Hylobates agilis). 

Shooting: The fruits of the Himalayan balsam (Impatiens glandulifera) open explosively with a popping sound, "shooting" their seeds to distances of 23 feet (7 meters) or so. A prolific seed producer, each plant produces about 2,500 seeds, and its dispersal technique helps the plant colonize new areas. Native to the Himalayas, but naturalized in Europe and elsewhere, it tends to become an invasive species and outcompete other plants.

Shot put: The Lammergeier (Gypaetus barbatus), also known as a bearded vulture, is one of the largest of the Old World vultures. This bird wins the IUCN's medal for shot put because it drops large bones from great heights in order to shatter them and eat the marrow inside.

Opening ceremonies: If there's any guest you'd want to have on hand for the Olympics' opening ceremonies, it'd be Zeus olympius. That's a species of fungus that makes its home on Mount Olympus, the mythical home of the Greek gods (including Zeus, the star of the show). It's found growing on the dead branches of pine trees. The IUCN notes that Zeus olympius has recently been found in one other location on Earth: an area of southwest Bulgaria, near the Greek border.

David Minter

The fungus known as Zeus olympius has been found only on dead branches of pine trees on Greece's Mount Olympus - and recently at a spot in Bulgaria.

More of the natural world's medal winners:

• London penguins show off their Olympic diving form
• Owl competes in 100 cm sprint at London zoo
• Barracudas' tricks adapted for Olympic swimmers
• Who would win the caveman Olympics?

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

TEAM Network via AFP / Getty Images

A jaguar prowls through the Central Suriname Nature Reserve at night.

The individual scenes tell wonderful wildlife stories: A jaguar goes on the prowl during the night. An elephant takes a stroll through the jungle. A mountain gorilla strikes a pose with a baby on her back. But when you put together 52,000 of those hidden-camera scenes, you can see the bigger picture: The more territory you set aside for wild mammals, the more diversity you'll find. And soon you may be able to contribute to that bigger picture as well.

The tens of thousands of "Candid Camera" moments come from the first worldwide camera-trap mammal study, conducted by a consortium known as the Tropical Ecology Assessment and Monitoring Network, or TEAM Network. In a study published by the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, scientists documented 105 species that showed up in nearly 52,000 images from seven protected areas in the Americas, Africa and Asia.

The camouflaged cameras were designed to snap pictures when they detect the heat signature of an animal nearby — whether it's a mouse opossum weighing just an ounce, or an African elephant weighing more than four tons. Wild creatures weren't the only things that were caught on camera: The traps also picked up pictures of tourists or poachers who happened to walk by.

WCS / TEAM Network via AFP - Getty Images

A mountain gorilla (Gorilla berengei berengei) lies in front of a hidden camera with a baby on its back in Uganda's Bwindi Impenetrable Forest.

At each of the sites, 60 camera traps were set up for a month, with each camera covering a 2-square-kilometer area. Images for the TEAM project were collected between 2008 and 2010. The pictures showed plenty of cute animals, including giant anteaters, a curious chimpanzee, tapirs, jaguars and cougars. But the study's lead author, Jorge Ahumada of Conservation International, said the cuteness of the pictures was not the focus of the project.

"We're really concerned not about a particular species, but about the health of an ecosystem," he told me today.

Camera traps have been used before for a wide range of species-specific projects, including studies of shimmying bears, seldom-seen leopards and extremely rare rhinos. But the TEAM scientists are more interested in conducting a wider census of species in protected areas around the world. The results could suggest particular locales where conservationists and policymakers should concentrate their efforts.

"Sometimes we operate in the dark, because we don't have a systematic global effort," Ahumada said.

Trento Museum of Science / TEAM Network via AP

This image provided by the Trento Museum of Science shows an African elephant in Tanzania's Udzungwa Mountains on Oct. 11, 2009. It's one of almost 52,000 photos of 105 mammal species taken as part of the first global camera trap mammal study by the TEAM Network.

The scientists have already found that mammalian species diversity is related to how much land is set aside for a protected area, as well as how fragmented the area is. The Central Suriname Nature Reserve in South America had the most species show up on camera (28), while Laos' Nam Kading National Protected Area in Southeast Asia had the least (13). In the Laotian reserve, not a single insect-eating mammal was seen.

"The results of the study are important in that they confirm what we suspected: Habitat destruction is slowly but surely killing our planet’s mammal diversity," Ahumada said in a news release. "We take away two key findings from this research. First, protected areas matter: The bigger the forest they live in, the higher the number and diversity of species, body sizes and diet types. Second, some mammals seem more vulnerable to habitat loss than others: Insect-eating mammals — like anteaters, armadillos and some primates, are the first to disappear — while other groups, like herbivores, seem to be less sensitive."

TEAM Network via AFP - Getty Images

An ocelot walks by a camouflaged camera in Brazil's Manaus nature reserve. The picture is one of nearly 52,000 images collected by the TEAM Network.

Ahumada told me that reduced biodiversity could have a big impact on other environmental issues as well, including climate change and Earth's carbon balance.

"Some scientists suggested not too long ago that if you remove mammals from forests ... you will shift the forest community toward trees that will have much less wood, much less density of carbon per unit weight. That's an unintended consequence of not paying attention to these animals and the whole ecosystem," he said.

He said the findings reported today were just "an initial snapshot" of species diversity in protected areas. "Now, for some of these sites, we have four or five years of data," he added. The TEAM Network has already expanded from seven to 17 sites, and it's aiming to have camera traps in 40 protected areas around the world by 2013. That will provide a regularly updated census of mammalian species in the world's hot spots for biodiversity.

And who knows? Maybe someday there'll be a hot spot near you. Ahumada said he and his colleagues are planning to make their image-analysis software available to the public, so that anyone with a camera trap can gather data about the creatures that pass by.

"Involving citizens in science is great," he said. "The more information we have, the more we know is happening."

TEAM Network via AFP - Getty Images

A South American tapir (Tapirus terrestris) makes an appearance in a camera-trap photo taken in the Central Suriname Nature Reserve.

More about biodiversity:

• More pictures from the camera-trap mammal study
• Tiger poachers caught on camera ... their own
• Biological gems found in the Philippines
• Search for 'biodiversity' on msnbc.com

The TEAM Network is a partnership involving Conservation International, the Missouri Botanical Garden, the Smithsonian Institution and the Wildlife Conservation Society. The effort is partially funded by those institutions and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.

In addition to Ahumada, the authors of "Community Structure and Diversity of Tropical Forest Mammals: Data from a Global Camera Trap Network" include Carlos E.F. Silva, Krisna Gajapersad, Chris Hallam, Johanna Hurtado, Emanuel Martin, Alex McWilliam, Badru Mugerwa, Tim O'Brien, Francesco Rovero, Douglas Sheil, Wilson R. Spironello, Nurul Winarni and Sandy J. Andelman.

TEAM's local partners in the study are Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazonia (INPA), Conservation International Suriname, Organization for Tropical Studies, Museo Tridentino di Scienze Naturali, and Institute of Tropical Forest Conservation. The seven protected areas monitored for the study were Bwindi Impenetrable Forest (Uganda), Udzungwa Mountains National Park (Tanzania), Bukit Barisan Selatan National Park (Indonesia), Nam Kading National Protected Area (Laos), Central Suriname Nature Reserve (Suriname), Manaus (Brazil) and Volcan Barva Transect (Costa Rica). 

Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page or following @b0yle on Twitter. You can also add me to your Google+ circle, and check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.