Fastest animal
 What is the fastest animal on Earth — when we measure its speed in terms of its body length per second?
(Hint: the cheetah isn't close...)
April Holladay
Published on Monday, Feb. 08,
2010 12:01 PM MST
A cheetah is
the fastest land mammal if you measure speed in kilometers per hour. Its top speed of
113 km/h (70 mph) beats a 48 km/h (30-mph) kangaroo or 48 km/h house cat.
Which animal is faster - a cheetah, kangaroo, or house
cat? Aditya, New Delhi, India
But, if we consider the animal's size, the picture changes.
Measuring how many body lengths an animal goes in a second, we find the house cat (29 body lengths) beats the cheetah,
(25 body lengths), which beats the kangaroo
(1 body length). See table below, where I've included many animals.
 The
tiger beetle (125 body lengths), however, is the supreme winner in terms of
body-length speed. This little creature sprints so fast, it stops three or four times during a chase, but
still manages to outrun its target, says entomologist
Cole Gilbert of Cornell University.
"Tiger beetles pursue prey in nature with several sequences of interrupted
running. To successfully track prey, adult tiger beetles use this stop-and-go
method to re-localize continually moving prey within their field of vision," says
entomologist
Phyllis M. Pineda of Colorado State University.
Apparently, a beetle receives more information than he can process as he runs,
so he reduces the information flood by stopping periodically. Now he need
only to re-locate the darting, direction-changing prey with the part of his
compound eye where his vision is most acute and head in the new direction.
Finally, at the last and shortest pursuit, the tiger beetle seizes the prey
with his sickle-like mandibles (the principal jaws) and eats it."
Animal-Speed Information from Natural History Magazine,
March 1974:
|
Land Animal |
Speed |
|
kilometers / hour |
miles / hour |
body-lengths / second |
| Cheetah |
113 |
70 |
Cheetah:
25 |
| Pronghorn antelope |
98 |
61 |
|
| Lion, Thomson's gazelle,
Wildebeest |
80 |
50 |
|
| Quarter horse |
77 |
48 |
|
| Cape hunting dog, Elk
|
72 |
45 |
|
| Coyote |
69 |
43 |
|
| Gray fox |
68 |
42 |
|
| Hyena, Zebra, Ostrich,
Mongolian wild ass |
64 |
40 |
|
| Greyhound |
63 |
39 |
|
| Whippet, Jackal, Mule deer,
Rabbit (domestic) |
56 |
35 |
|
| Giraffe, Reindeer |
52 |
32 |
|
| Cat (domestic), Kangaroo,
Grizzly bear, Wart hog, White-tailed deer |
48 |
30 |
House cat:
29 Kangaroo: 1 |
| Human (Michael Johnson) |
45 |
28 |
Human:
7 |
| Elephant |
40 |
25 |
|
| Black mamba snake |
32 |
20 |
|
| Squirrel |
19 |
12 |
|
| Pig (domestic) |
18 |
11 |
|
| Chicken |
14 |
9 |
|
| House mouse |
13 |
8 |
|
| Spider (Tegenearia
atrica), Tiger beetle |
1.9 |
1.2 |
Tiger beetle: 125 |
| Giant tortoise |
0.27 |
0.17 |
|
| Three-toed sloth |
0.24 |
0.15 |
|
| Garden snail |
0.05 |
0.03 |
|
Speed of
animals, Infoplease.com, March 1974
April Holladay lives in Albuquerque,
New Mexico. Her column, WonderQuest, appears every second Monday of the month
on WonderQuest.com. To read April's past columns, please visit her
website . If you have a question for
April, visit this
information page .
(Answered Feb. 08, 2010)
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