Talk:Fastest animals

Incomplete?

I just read an article that the serval is among the fastest animals at 75-80 km/h but it's not on the list. Then I started looking for other top-lists and found a couple other animals which are missing from here. Eg. http://dinoanimals.com/animals/the-fastest-animals-in-the-world-top-100/

Fejesjoco (talk) 19:54, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

Yes, Smithsonian channel has also claimed that Servals are second fastest cat after cheeath with 50 mph top speed. There are also other claims of caracals having 80km/h top speed. Ishan87 (talk) 14:29, 15 October 2022 (UTC)

Adding deer

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

References

Guerrouj and Masterkova

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)

Ostrich Missing Top 20

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)

Measurement Format Inconsistency

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)

Relative Speed

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)

Fastest reptile?

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)

Spurious precision

(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)

Incorrect table sorting

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)