Strange AnimalsSpeed Race
Top speed only tells you who wins the first few seconds. Pick up to five animals and a distance, and each one runs on its real profile: how fast it sprints, how long it can hold that sprint, and what pace it drops to once the burst is spent. Change the distance and watch the order flip.
Speed is paid for in heat and oxygen
A sprint runs mostly on anaerobic muscle fibres, which deliver huge power but build heat and lactate fast. A cheetah's body temperature climbs during a chase, so most hunts last under a minute and cover a few hundred metres. Lions are worse: they rely on stalking close, because their burst lasts only seconds.
Endurance hunters play a different game
African wild dogs chase in relays at around 55 km/h for kilometres and have one of the highest hunting success rates of any large carnivore. Kangaroos hop more cheaply the faster they go, because their tendons store and return energy like springs. Humans are slow sprinters but sweat well enough to run down antelope in the heat.
The numbers behind the race
Top speed is the best credible measurement. Burst is roughly how long that speed can be held; cruise is the pace the animal can keep up afterwards. Burst and cruise figures are rounded field estimates, so treat close finishes as ties.
Keep exploring
12 other tools, all built on published wildlife data.