How Fast Do Animals Run? Cheetah, Horse & Dog Speeds

How fast does a cheetah run? The best timed run is 64.2 mph (103.3 km/h), and wild cheetahs wearing GPS collars peaked at 57.9 mph (93.2 km/h). No other land animal comes close. This page is a hub for animal running speeds: the cheetah, the horse and the dog get their own sections, and a sourced table compares them with the pronghorn, ostrich, kangaroo, bear, elephant and the fastest human. Every figure comes from a timed record, a peer-reviewed study or a zoo or national park page, and every mph to km/h conversion is calculated with the site’s own unit code.

Two kinds of numbers get mixed up online. A timed speed comes from a stopwatch, video or sensor over a measured distance. A quoted speed is an estimate repeated from book to book. Where the two disagree, this page says so.

How fast does a cheetah run?

A cheetah’s best timed speed is 28.7 m/s, which is 64.2 mph or 103.3 km/h (Guinness rounds it to 64.3 mph). Professor Craig Sharp timed a 35 kg captive female named Pritchelou in 1965. She started 18 m behind a 201.2 m (220-yard) course, chased a lure pulled by a Land Rover, and the speed is the average of three runs. Sharp published the result in the Journal of Zoology only in 1997, after learning that earlier records were unreliable.

The famous “70 mph” or “71 mph” cheetah (about 113 to 114 km/h) comes from older claims; Sharp’s paper notes that the earlier published records were unreliable, which is why he published his 1965 timings. The Smithsonian’s National Zoo still gives a range of 60 to 70 mph, so the honest answer is “about 60 to 64 mph, measured”.

What do wild cheetahs actually run? In 2013 Alan Wilson’s team at the Royal Veterinary College fitted five wild cheetahs in Botswana’s Okavango Delta with GPS and motion-sensor collars and recorded 367 runs over 17 months. The fastest reached 25.9 m/s (57.9 mph, 93.2 km/h), but the average top speed per hunt was only 14.9 m/s, or 33.3 mph (53.6 km/h). The study found that cheetahs win hunts with acceleration, braking and sharp turns, not with flat-out speed.

How fast can a horse run?

The fastest racehorse speed on record is 70.35 km/h (43.7 mph), set by the two-year-old filly Winning Brew, who covered 2 furlongs (402 m) in 20.57 seconds at Penn National Race Course, Pennsylvania, on 14 May 2008. That is the figure on the current Guinness World Records page. Many sites quote 70.76 km/h (43.97 mph) for the same run; the Guinness record page we checked on 25 Oct 2026 gives 70.35 km/h, and 402 m in 20.57 s works out to the lower figure.

Speed falls as races get longer. The Guinness record over 1.5 miles (2,414 m) is 60.86 km/h (37.8 mph), set by Hawkster at Santa Anita Park in 1989 in 2:22.8. A racehorse can hold close to 38 mph for well over two minutes, something no cheetah can do.

Horse speed by gait. Riding horses move much slower than racing Thoroughbreds. The Montana State University Extension gives these typical ranges:

A rider can check these numbers directly: start the GPS speedometer at the top of this page, put the phone in a zipped pocket, and read the max speed after the ride. GPS updates about once a second, so a short burst reads lower than the true peak.

How fast can a dog run?

The racing greyhound is the fastest dog with a published measurement: 19 m/s, which is 42.5 mph or 68.4 km/h. Penny Hudson, Sandra Corr and Alan Wilson of the Royal Veterinary College filmed trained racing greyhounds and captive cheetahs on the same straight track and reported the result in the Journal of Experimental Biology in 2012 (ScienceDaily summary). In that test the greyhounds were actually faster than the captive cheetahs, which topped out at 17.8 m/s (39.8 mph). Pet cheetahs that chase a lure for fun are not wild hunters.

The 45 mph greyhound figure on many dog sites has no traceable measurement behind it. The same is true of the long breed lists (Saluki, Vizsla, Dalmatian and so on) that give each breed a precise mph. We found no peer-reviewed speeds for them, so we do not repeat them. Most pet dogs run well below greyhound speed, and size, age, fitness and surface matter more than breed labels.

Animal speed comparison table

The cheetah is fastest, the pronghorn second, and racehorses, ostriches and greyhounds form a close group at 42 to 44 mph. The table lists each animal’s best published top speed, converted with the site’s speed converter code (1 mph = 1.609344 km/h exactly).

A few notes on the table. The ostrich can also hold a steady 31 mph (49.9 km/h), per San Diego Zoo. The elephant figure comes from video of 42 Asian elephants in Thailand; three topped 15 mph, about 50 percent faster than any earlier reliable record. And we left the lion without a number on purpose: the popular “50 mph” lion appears everywhere but traces back to no published timing.

What about the fastest animal of all? The table covers running animals. In the air the record belongs to the peregrine falcon: the National Park Service says a stooping peregrine may reach about 200 mph (322 km/h), but most dives are closer to 100 mph, because the bird uses only as much speed as it needs to catch its prey.

Why are cheetahs so fast?

Cheetahs combine a long, flexible spine, long legs and a light body (Sharp’s record cheetah weighed 35 kg), so each stride covers a lot of ground. Hudson’s 2012 study found that at the same speed a cheetah uses longer, slower strides than a greyhound, and at high speed it carries about 70 percent of its weight on its hind legs (62 percent for a greyhound), which helps it push off and accelerate. The 2013 Wilson study adds the other half of the story: hunts are short, tight-turning chases, so grip, braking and acceleration decide success more than top speed.

The price is endurance. A cheetah overheats and tires after a few hundred yards, while a pronghorn or a horse can keep running fast for minutes.

How to measure an animal’s speed with your phone

You can get a rough top speed for a horse ride or a dog run with any phone GPS: open this page, tap Start, allow location, and read the max speed afterwards.

1. Use open ground with a clear sky view; trees and buildings make GPS jump.
2. Wait until the speed reads 0 while standing still before starting.
3. For a horse, keep the phone in a zipped pocket or a saddle bag. For a dog, use a secure harness pouch and a safe, enclosed area.
4. Read the max speed and distance at the end, and export the GPX track if you want to see the speed graph.

GPS speed is an estimate. GPS.gov notes that smartphone accuracy depends on signal, sky view and device, and a 1-second update rate smooths out short bursts. Treat the reading as a guide, not a race timing. For people, see how fast a human can run, the average walking speed and average cycling speed, or convert any figure with km/h to mph.