user: Can a tortoise beat a hare?
"Look at me!’ said the hare to the other animals. "Just look how fast I can run." So boasts the hare in Aesop's fable The tortoise and the hare.

The hare certainly was very fast and knew it. So when the tortoise agreed to race him, the other animals did not think the poor tortoise stood a chance.

That's not surprising, it moves less than half of the day, and when it does, it doesn't go very fast at all.

But in an unlikely turn of events, the over-confident hare finds that, after a nap, the tortoise crosses the finish line first.

But would that ever happen in real life? Could a tortoise really beat a hare in a race?

We asked you our audience for your insight. "Depends what kind of race. In a race of longevity my money is on the tortoise," Cal Frame pointed out.

In no scenario does the tortoise win, other than in the time it is alive on this earth

"The race is a metaphor for life. A tortoise outlives a hare," says Joshua Taylor. He is right. Some species of tortoise can live for 150 years while a hare does not tend to live past seven, averaging between three and five years.

Jimmy Dee believes that the tortoise will keep a straight path as long as nothing is in its way, the hare on the other hand, will wander.

Not everyone agrees. "Oh BBC referring to the old fable tale. The question is too vague, therefore there is more than one answer," says Ty Huynh.

We all love an underdog winner

Edmond Theodore Roo did some calculations for us and suggests that "in no scenario does the tortoise win, other than in the time it is alive on this earth."

But it seems the majority of you do think the tortoise will win, especially if it is a long distance race.

"The Hare needs more calories to sprint to the finish line and needs to eat more...The tortoise is slow and steady needing to stop less using less calories." says Kenny Wright.

So are they right? We at BBC Earth wanted to find some sort of definite answer, so I put the question to some people in the know.

First, we need to consider what kind of race it is. Different races, as we know, have very different requirements and competitors. If we break it down into three races, says conservation geneticist Taylor Edwards of the University of Arizona, US, all might have quite different results.

"Just like in the Olympics you don’t have just one, you have sprints and cross country too. So too for a tortoise and a hare."

Firstly, in a sprint, given that it can reach speeds of 50-60km/h, the hare (or jackrabbit) would win hands down.

Secondly, if it was an endurance race, it might be more even. Desert tortoises have the ability to persevere through harsh conditions over long distances, explains Edwards. The same goes for some jackrabbits. They are also well adapted to desert conditions – their large ears help cool them down. "It might be fairly even if we were to look at them side by side."

And the third race is the one Edwards assures me that the tortoise comes out ahead. It's the evolutionary race. Jackrabbits have only been around for 40 million years at most, whereas turtles, which come from the same family as tortoises, for 200 million years (tortoises themselves for between 80-60 million years). Couple this with their long lifespan and the tortoise certainly comes out ahead, he says.

But there is another factor we could consider: the distance travelled over lifetime.

Given its long lifespan, would the tortoise travel further? Edwards thinks yes. Here's why.

A giant tortoise can travel at most, 10km per month, crawling along at snail speeds of 60 metres per hour. (smaller desert tortoises can go a lot faster: 3-5 km/h). A hare can reach speeds of over 60km/h but it does not tend to veer outside its home range of 1-3km squared. It stays there all year.

Anybody who has spent time outside knows that rabbits run in circles

So if we consider that a giant tortoise might travel 120km in one year, over say a lifespan of 100 years, they would travel 12,000 km.

A hare would smash that in only one year if they were running at their top speed for 3 hours of each day. That would come out at 65,000km a year.

But the giant Galapagos tortoise goes on seasonal migrations and have much bigger home ranges than hares - ranging from 10km squared to 40.

Hares on the other hand have quite a small home range, they tend to live in a particular area and do not venture too far away from it. So even if they could run 65,000 km in one year, they tend to run in circles, and not travel very far. And to cross a finish line, you have to go somewhere.

This was also pointed out by Shawn Scholl: "In the simplest terms, no metaphors… the tortoise would win. Why? Anybody who has spent time outside knows that rabbits run in circles... so the tortoise wins."

There is still some truth to Aesop's fable

Another researcher, Guillaume Bastille-Rousseau of State University in New York, US, specialises in giant Galapagos tortoises. He agrees that it all depends on how long the race is. "If the race was over an hour the tortoise doesn't have any chance." But over its long lifetime, he puts his money on the tortoise too.

Clearly it's difficult to compare the two animals like for like. And when you consider all the variables such as age, lifespan and home range, the answer is more complicated than one winner alone.

But the biological evidence suggests there is some truth to Aesop's fable: slow and steady – over a long lifetime – certainly can win a race.

Melissa Hogenboom is BBC Earth's feature writer. She is @melissasuzanneh on Twitter.

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assistant: Which would win a real race between a tortoise and hare?