A cheetah sprinting low across dry golden savannah grass in warm evening light
AI-generated image, not a photograph of a real person or place.
speedoodles

WHAT THE MEASUREMENTS SAY

Fast, measured
properly.

MEASURE don't guess

  • Top speed is rare
  • Old records can shrink
  • Middle size is fastest
  • Speed, by the evidence

Animal speed records are easy to repeat and hard to check.

Researchers now use GPS collars, muscle tests and large datasets to measure how fast animals really go. Some famous figures hold up, some shrink a lot, and a simple pattern explains why the largest animals are not the quickest.

Updated

Check an animal

THE SHORT ANSWER

Fast animals are real,
fast legends less so.

Three findings from field and lab studies
that change how we read speed records.

MEASURED

The cheetah's real top speed

GPS collars on five wild cheetahs in Botswana recorded a top speed of 25.9 metres a second, about 93 km/h. Most hunts used only moderate speeds.

See the numbers

MYTH

Sailfish, slowed down

Old estimates put sailfish at around 35 m/s. Muscle tests suggest about 8.3 m/s, and that they cannot exceed 10 to 15 m/s.

Check an animal

SIZE

Bigger is not faster

Across 474 species, top speed rises with size and then falls again, because the largest animals run out of time to accelerate.

Why size matters

A QUICK SPEED CHECK

How fast,
on the evidence?

Pick an animal to see its top speed as measured or estimated in a peer-reviewed study. The bar shows how fast it is compared with the others here.

Speed check

Choose an animal
Cheetah25.9 m/s, about 93 km/h

The highest speed recorded across 367 runs by five wild cheetahs, most of them hunts. Most runs were at moderate speeds.

SailfishAbout 8.3 m/s

Roughly 30 km/h. The study found sailfish are unlikely to exceed 10 to 15 m/s, the speed at which cavitation would damage their fins.

BarracudaAbout 6.2 m/s

Roughly 22 km/h, the second highest estimate among the four large predatory fish in the study.

DoradoAbout 4.0 m/s

Roughly 14 km/h, the lowest estimated top speed of the four fish tested.

Sources: Wilson et al., Nature (2013); Svendsen et al., Biology Open (2016).

Cheetah speed from GPS collars (Wilson et al., 2013). Fish speeds estimated from muscle contraction time (Svendsen et al., 2016). Approximate km/h conversions are ours.

TWO NUMBERS WORTH KNOWING

Real data,
real limits.

One record from a tracking collar,
one pattern from hundreds of species.

93 km/h

Top speed of a wild cheetah, GPS-collared

25.9 m/s (58 mph), from 367 runs by five cheetahs in Botswana. The collars also recorded some of the highest acceleration and deceleration measured in any land mammal.

CHEETAH · ROYAL VETERINARY COLLEGE

474 species

Species in the speed and size dataset

From 30 micrograms to 100 tonnes, on land and in water. Maximum speed follows a hump-shaped curve with body mass, so the largest animals are not the fastest.

SCALING · NATURE ECOLOGY & EVOLUTION

A 2018 study of lions, zebras, cheetahs and impalas found the predators had 20% higher muscle fibre power, 37% greater acceleration and 72% greater deceleration than their prey.

FOUR QUESTIONS FOR ANY SPEED RECORD

Before you
repeat a number.

A small group of elephants walking steadily across a dusty plain under a wide sky
AI-generated image, not a photograph of a real person or place.

Animal speed claims travel fast. These questions, drawn from how the studies here were done, help sort measured figures from guesses.

  1. How was it measured?

    A GPS collar on a wild animal is very different from a stopwatch estimate or an old anecdote.

  2. Is it physically possible?

    The sailfish study checked old claims against cavitation, the speed at which water would damage fins.

  3. Is it a peak or a habit?

    Cheetahs can hit 93 km/h, but most hunts in the study ran at moderate speeds.

  4. Does size fit the claim?

    Across 474 species, middle-sized animals reach the highest top speeds, not the giants.

WHY SIZE MATTERS

Big animals run
out of runway.

A sailfish with its tall blue dorsal fin raised, swimming through clear blue open ocean
AI-generated image, not a photograph of a real person or place.

Traditional models assumed top speed simply keeps rising with body size. The 2017 scaling study instead allows for the time an animal needs to accelerate, which is limited.

Because acceleration time is finite, large animals never reach the speed their size alone would predict, so their real maximum falls short. That gives a hump-shaped curve, and data from 474 species, on land and in water, strongly support it.

Questions

Questions people ask

How fast can a cheetah really run?

The fastest run recorded by GPS collars on wild cheetahs in Botswana was 25.9 metres a second, about 93 km/h or 58 mph. Most of the 367 runs, mostly hunts, were at moderate speeds.

Is the sailfish really the fastest fish?

The famous figure of around 35 m/s does not hold up. A 2016 muscle study estimated sailfish top speed at about 8.3 m/s and concluded they cannot exceed 10 to 15 m/s.

What is cavitation and why does it limit fish?

Cavitation is the formation of vapour bubbles in water. The sailfish study cites theoretical work predicting it would occur at 10 to 15 m/s, with destructive consequences for fin tissue, which puts a ceiling on realistic speeds.

Why are elephants and whales not the fastest animals?

A 2017 study of 474 species found top speed rises with body mass and then falls. Animals have only a finite time to accelerate, and the largest ones run out of it before reaching the speed their size would otherwise suggest.

Do predators always outrun their prey?

Not always. A 2018 study found predators had more muscle power, acceleration and deceleration than their prey, but hunts at lower speeds let prey use their full turning ability, which favours escape.

Sources

Where the facts come from

  1. Wilson et al. (2013), Locomotion dynamics of hunting in wild cheetahs, Nature
  2. Svendsen et al. (2016), Maximum swimming speeds of sailfish and three other large marine predatory fish species, Biology Open
  3. Hirt et al. (2017), A general scaling law reveals why the largest animals are not the fastest, Nature Ecology & Evolution
  4. Wilson et al. (2018), Biomechanics of predator-prey arms race in lion, zebra, cheetah and impala, Nature

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