Talk:Fastest animals

Hello, could deer (i.e. red deer) be added to this list? According to this^[1] article different types of deers can reach up to 60-65 km/h. Sauer202 (talk) 16:13, 11 September 2018 (UTC)

Should the speed of Guerrouj and Masterkova be in the article as it is now under the mammal section? 92.19.189.218 (talk) 19:39, 9 January 2019 (UTC)

As opposed to?... Not in the article at all? Under some other (or stand-alone) section? What are you seeking?--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 05:07, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

• Remove. That section discusses "maximum speed". Long-distance events are not usually know for producing the fastest miles per hour, unlike the 100m. 92.19.183.122 (talk) 18:05, 26 January 2019 (UTC)
• Remove. Usain Bolt set a maximum speed record during the 100m sprint because over this short distance a person is able to run as fast as is humanly possible, by using a huge burst of energy over a short space of time. Greater distances are more about human endurance rather than maximum speed because a person needs to pace themselves to cover the distance. Even though the 200m is classed as a "sprint" race, the maximum and average speeds reached are lower than those in the 100m due to the limitations in human endurance. These limitations are even more apparent in the 400m and 800m in which the average/maximum speeds are even lower than in the 200m. The mile run is mostly about endurance and even though you obviously need to produce a greater average (and maximum) speed to complete the mile in a shorter time, an absolute maximum value for speed in a human can only ever be attained over very short distances. Rodney Baggins (talk) 22:42, 7 February 2019 (UTC)

The note says that ostriches and swordfish have around the same speed, but fails to actually add the ostrich into the fastest animals — Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.95.1.201 (talk) 04:32, 12 July 2019 (UTC)

Just wanted to say that the page has some inconsistency with the format in which it lists the speed measurements. Fluctuates between liting km/h first and mph first. 50.100.49.243 (talk) 21:17, 18 August 2019 (UTC)

I'm trying to find the relative speed of animals, but after trying my hand at the cheetah, I'm left conflicted about how to do it. The cheetah is said to be 16 body lengths, but I came to the conclusion of a range of about 20-30 body lengths, and I want to know where this discrepancy comes from. I divided the number of meters per second by their length to get my answer. — Preceding unsigned comment added by ThunderBrine (talk contribs) 02:59, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

I suggest that you stop making relative speed calculations. We don't edit Wikipedia based on what one editor assumes, and some of your assumptions are clearly incorrect. I've removed your edits. Meters (talk) 03:16, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

I really want to do the relative speed on as many animals as possible, the problems being I just need to find my mistakes. There's probably a special formula to get a more accurate answer, but in the meantime I will stop. Once I've found an answer come to an acceptable conclusion, I will report my findings here for communal debate and examination. Will that be acceptable? ThunderBrine (talk) 15:32, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

I’m yet to see any actual sources showing that bearded dragons can run at 25 mph as the source provided doesn’t seem to show anything substantial on it and contradicts itself by saying they can run at 9 mph. Anybody feel like linking something that shows evidence of them running at 25 mph? Alistair Naj (talk) 06:15, 18 August 2020 (UTC)

(See false precision.)

The headline claims that the Cheetah has a top speed of "120.7 km/h (75.0 mph)".

That would imply that the Cheetah's speed was measured to an accuracy of ±0.05 km/h (±0.03 mph) which is extremely unlikely to be true, and certainly is not backed up by any cited sources. Moreover, some of the citations say that speeds over 70 mph have been discredited, so using that in the headline is doubly dubious.

This pattern continues throughout the article: numbers that are integer multiples of 5 appear far more often than would occur by chance, which strongly suggests that most of them are approximations, accurate to (at best) ±2½, and more likely ±5. Yet most of them give imperial/metric conversions that imply accuracy of ±0.5, and even worse, some include ".0", implying that they are accurate to ±0.05.

The abuses are clearer where ranges are given:

Tigers [...] have been recorded going anywhere from 30 mph (48 km/h) to 40 mph (64 km/h)

Tigers have been documented going slower than 30 mph, so clearly the given range is supposed to indicate an upper bound with an indication of its uncertainty: ±5 mph at best. Therefore showing anything other than "0" or "5" as the last digit is unjustified, and I suggest that it should be shown as "30 to 40 mph (50 to 65 km/h)", or even better, just "up to 40 mph (65 km/h)".

At least 16 other claims in this article are demonstrably false because of their egregiously spurious precision, and another dozen or so have are whole multiples of 5 that should not be taken as implying ±0.5 precision.

Many of these errors were introduced by a single edit back in 2013, which nobody has seen fit to revert or repair.

This is so bad that I don't have the energy to try to fix it.

TL;DR: please don't edit any numbers here without first reading false precision.

Martin Kealey (talk) 00:31, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

Siberian tigers is claimed to have top speeds up to 80 km/h on short bursts that helps them run down prey on top of snow. This appears in google search, also I've watched this claim in an episode of an old Nat Geo tv show called- Build For Speed. I read about this claim in a couple of hunting journals about Siberian tigers. Hard to find a reliable link to use here tho. Ishan87 (talk) 14:34, 15 October 2022 (UTC)

84.212.241.103 (talk) 09:30, 27 September 2025 (UTC)There have never been any recordings of a cheetah in the wild reaching speeds of over 100 km/h. It seems it can get close, and under artificial circumstances, one instance of 104 km/h has been recorded. The number given in the table has no merit.

Is there a reason why some of these tables sort correctly (i.e. numerically) when sorting by the speed column, and others don't (instead sorting them as if they were dictionary entries, with 97 being higher than 389)? Belbury (talk) 13:52, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

As with other mammals, the humpback whale's top speed record is faster than that of the Asian elephant, and there are papers on the same, including the top speed record of a marine mammal, such as the top speed of an orca. 121.157.211.232 (talk) 13:45, 24 May 2025 (UTC)

The humbpack whale being faster than an elephant is irrelevant. The article is "Fastest animals," not "List of animal speeds." This isn't intended to be an exhaustive list of every animal's speed. It should be a list of fastest animals across various classes of animals. There are already several faster whales listed; we don't need to list all of them. OhNoitsJamie ^Talk 15:30, 24 May 2025 (UTC)

There is this belief that many animals have a greater resistance to fatigue than cheetahs in a sense that they can maintain their top speed for hours compared to cheetahs, when they do not.

All animal species with muscle-driven locomotion use anaerobic sources such as glycogen and creatine phosphate at times of peak demand, regardless of whether they are just sprinters or also long-distance runners.

And there is no species that can maintain its maximum speed for hours.

After 30-45 seconds of running at full speed, glycogen and creatine phosphate will be depleted, making it impossible to continue running longer at maximum speed.

The use of glycogen and creatine phosphate allows for greater muscle power compared to oxygen, so if any animal uses up its reserves of the former and is left with only oxygen (if it uses it), the maximum speed it can develop would be less than its maximum speed achieved by using glycolytic/anaerobic sources.

The reality is that because cheetahs are specialised so that their muscles use almost only anaerobic energy sources, this means that they will abandon a race 30-45 seconds into it because their creatine phosphate and glycogen stores are depleted.

But species known for their endurance, once they use up all their glycolytic reserves, will switch to oxygen, so they can continue running, but at a much lower maximum speed than they can achieve.

This has been called "aerobic maximum speed", the maximum speed developed only with oxygen, which is usually lower than the maximum speed (sprint) that usually involves aenaerobic muscle metabolism on a mandatory basis.

While a human reaches 40 km/h accelerating in the first half of the 100 m, in the 10 000 m the average speed is 21 km/h.

Horses win races at speeds of 58-61 km/h in the one mile (1.6 km) race, while greyhounds do so at speeds of 56-58 km/h.

While in a human sprint 80% of the energy provided to the muscles comes from anaerobic sources, that proportion is less than 30% in a racehorse.

It has been estimated that a pronghorn could develop a speed of 70 km/h using oxygen principally, so higher speeds would necessarily require the use of principally glycolytic sources.

This is based on the report of pronghorns running at 65 km/h for 10 minutes.

And it has been reported that the top speeds of 80-97 km/h reported for pronghorn can only be maintained for short periods of time.

Whereas a cheetah reaches a speed of 104 km/h for around 7 seconds and 201 metres.

So to make a long story short, using oxygen, the maximum speed that can be reached is 70 km/h for almost 10 minutes, being the upper limit of aerobic physical demand.

(Speeds of 72 km/h for up 3 km has been consistently reported in pronghorns without showing signs of fatigue). — Preceding unsigned comment added by LeandroPucha (talk • contribs) 14:42, 21 July 2025 (UTC)

Using glycogen and creatine phosphates, higher speeds of around 100 km/h can be reached, but only for periods of up to 45 seconds.

But then there is the detail of acceleration.

Felids like lions and cheetahs with their extreme acceleration, necessarily need less adaptations to supplement oxygen to their muscles and more adaptations for muscle power and sprinting (higher muscle mass in the limbs in relation to body mass, higher concentration of glycolytic fast twitch fibres type IIx and a mainly aenaerobic muscle metabolism).

Don't worry, I won't put all this in this entry, but a very summarised version.

https://www.originalwisdom.com/wp-content/uploads/bsk-pdf-manager/2020/04/Alexander_2013_Principles-of-Animal-Locomotion.pdf

https://doi.org/10.1242/jeb.247284

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/13826213_Skeletal_muscle_histology_and_biochemistry_of_an_elite_sprinter_the_African_cheetah

https://archive.org/details/pronghornantelop00eina/page/49/mode/1up

https://books.google.com.ec/books?id=H170TWNKyuYC&lpg=PA12&dq=on%20the%20short%20grass%20prairie%20of%20north-central%20colorado%2C%20i%20observed%20pronghorns%20that%20had%20run%20roughly%20two%20miles%20put%20on%20a%20burst%20speed%20and%20run%20away%20from%20a%20closely%20pursuing%20light%20plane%20that%20was%20traveling%20at%2072%20km.%20per%20hour.&hl=es&pg=PA12#v=onepage&q&f=false — Preceding unsigned comment added by LeandroPucha (talk • contribs) 16:35, 18 July 2025 (UTC)

https://books.google.com.ec/books?id=R0AEkQ0jY40C&lpg=PR7&dq=info%3AkPCBLJfqHL4J%3Ascholar.google.com%2F&lr&hl=es&pg=PA1#v=onepage&q&f=false

LeandroPucha (talk) 16:00, 18 July 2025 (UTC)

The Tasmanian nativehen (Tribonyx mortierii) has been clocked at 48km/hr. That's faster than a roadrunner. Why isn't out beloved Turbo Chook in this list? ~2026-36285-52 (talk) 01:26, 22 June 2026 (UTC) https://birdlife.org.au/bird-profiles/tasmanian-native-hen/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by ~2026-36285-52 (talk) 01:30, 22 June 2026 (UTC)

Anybody got a reliable source for that speed? I see it repeated frequently, but I've found no reliable source for it. SchreiberBike | ⌨  02:27, 22 June 2026 (UTC)

New marathon world record is 1:59:30 ~2026-37191-90 (talk) 12:57, 29 June 2026 (UTC)

Change made. Thanks for the heads up. SchreiberBike | ⌨  14:32, 29 June 2026 (UTC)

Black marlin is currently mentioned, in the lede, to have "uncertain and conflicting reports of recorded speeds". I thought we should add to that by mentioning e.g., "sources generally cites [minimal common value]"? 海盐沙冰 _{/ aka irisChronomia / Talk / Uploads} 13:31, 10 September 2026 (UTC)

The lion's speed is currently given as 80 km/h, cited to two sources: a CBS News listicle (ref "EL") and Schaller 1972, The Serengeti Lion, p. 233 (ref "SL", already used elsewhere in the article).

The CBS piece gives no source for the figure, and its stated author role is social-media/trending-content editor, not a subject-matter expert — fails WP:SCHOLARSHIP/WP:V for a quantitative claim.

More importantly, the Schaller citation directly contradicts the figure it is attached to. On the very page cited (p. 233), Schaller writes that the 80 km/h figure is "too high" and instead supports Guggisberg's (1961) estimate of 48–59 km/h — a range matching Schaller's own. Tracing the figure further back, Howell (1944), the source Schaller was responding to, does not actually give the lion a numeric speed at all; the only number on that page (65–70 mph) is for the cheetah. So the 80 km/h traces to a misreading of a qualitative comparison, not a measurement — and the source currently cited for it says as much on the cited page.

A directly relevant modern source is available:

• Wilson et al. (2018), Nature — GPS-IMU collar data from nine wild

 lions in Botswana: commonly-used speed 13.9 m/s (~50 km/h), maximum
 20.6 m/s (~74 km/h) in three individuals. 

I propose replacing 80 km/h with ~50 km/h (typical) / ~74 km/h (max recorded), citing Wilson et al. 2018, and noting that the 80 km/h figure is contradicted by its own cited source (Schaller 1972, p. 233). Elgusty00 (talk) 19:08, 17 September 2026 (UTC)