Now Scientists Can Accurately Guess The Speed Of Any Animal
The technique lets researchers predict an animal's maximum speed based on its size- and even works on dinosaurs.
Cheetahs hold the title of the world’s fastest land animal and can reach a top speed of 70 miles per hour. The Galápagos tortoise is roughly the same size as a cheetah, yet the fastest it can “run” is 0.17 miles per hour.
Though it seems intuitive that bigger animals should move faster—a longer stride covers more ground—that rule of thumb doesn’t always hold up.
Instead, previous research has shown that the fastest animals are not the largest or the smallest, but somewhere in the middle, like the cheetah. Yet even knowing that, scientists have had a hard time predicting how fast an animal would be without watching it run, fly, or swim. This is particularly an issue
