A top speed is a sprint
A top speed is the fastest an animal has been measured going, usually for a very short time. A cheetah reaches its top speed in a dash and then has to stop and rest. A pronghorn is not quite as fast, but it can keep going much longer. So who is "faster" depends on how far the race is.
That's why our race is always a short dash to a tree, and why the result card sometimes adds a line about what happens over a longer distance.
The table of top speeds
Here are the top speeds Peabody has a checked number for, fastest first. Each number links to the page it came from. Look at the last column: some animals are running, some are swimming, some are flying, and one is diving.
| Animal | Top speed | How |
|---|---|---|
| 🦅 Peregrine falcon | 200 mph322 km/h1 | diving |
| 🐟 Sailfish | 68 mph109 km/h2 | swimming |
| 🐆 Cheetah | 60 to 70 mph96 to 112 km/h3 | running |
| 🐦 Ruby-throated hummingbird | 60 mph97 km/h4 | diving |
| 🦌 Pronghorn | 55 mph89 km/h5 | running |
| 🦃 Wild turkey | 54 mph87 km/h6 | flying |
| 🦆 Mallard | 51 mph83 km/h7 | flying |
| 🐦 Ostrich | 43 mph69 km/h8 | running |
| 🦅 Bald eagle | 35 to 40 mph56 to 64 km/h9 | flying |
| 🦋 Common green darner | 37 mph60 km/h10 | flying |
| 🐺 Gray wolf | 35 mph56 km/h11 | running |
| 🐻 Grizzly bear | 35 mph56 km/h12 | running |
| 🦌 Moose | 35 mph56 km/h13 | running |
| 🦬 American bison | 35 mph56 km/h14 | running |
| 🦈 Great white shark | 35 mph56 km/h15 | swimming |
| 🐳 Orca | 35 mph56 km/h16 | swimming |
| 🦌 White-tailed deer | 30 mph48 km/h17 | running |
| 🐴 Horse | 20 to 30 mph32 to 48 km/h18 | running |
| 🦭 Walrus | 22 mph35 km/h19 | swimming |
| 🐋 Blue whale | 20 mph32 km/h20 | swimming |
| 🦋 Monarch butterfly | 9.9 to 30 mph16 to 48 km/h21 | flying |
| 🐦 Greater roadrunner | 20 mph32 km/h22 | running |
| 🐋 Humpback whale | 16 mph26 km/h23 | swimming |
| 🐋 West Indian manatee | 15 mph24 km/h24 | swimming |
| 🦦 North American river otter | 15 mph24 km/h25 | hopping |
| 🐡 Ocean sunfish | 14 mph22 km/h26 | swimming |
| 🦎 Komodo dragon | 9.9 to 12 mph16 to 20 km/h27 | running |
| 🦌 Reindeer (caribou) | 6 mph9.7 km/h28 | swimming |
| 🦫 North American beaver | 5 mph8.1 km/h29 | swimming |
| 🦎 Gila monster | 1.5 mph2.4 km/h30 | crawling |
Running, swimming, flying and diving are different races
Water is much thicker than air, so swimming fast is very hard work, and a fast fish would be slow in a running race on land. Flying and diving are faster still: a falcon diving through the air is helped by gravity, the way you go faster down a slide than walking on the flat.
When our race puts a swimmer against a runner, the result card says so. It is a fun way to compare, not a fair contest.
For Big readers: how speed is measured
Scientists measure animal speed in several ways: timing an animal between two marks, filming it and counting frames, tracking it with a GPS tag, or using a radar gun. Each method can give a different answer, and the fastest number ever recorded is often much higher than a typical one. When a page we trust gives a range, we show the range.
Pick Big at the top to see the part for older readers.