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124KM/H 320KM/H
Mako Shark Peregrine Falcon
Decidedly ‘slower,’ but also belonging to the sky, is the very Yet the human being has an incredible characteristic that
fast hummingbird, which flies at 100 km/h (even backwards) many fast animals do not have. Endurance. A cheetah can run
and whose wings move so quickly that they become invisible. at a speed of 120 km/h only for very short stretches, then it will
But let’s get back down to earth... here, the jaguar is the inevitably have to stop, open–mouthed, to recover oxygen. Its
fastest animal. It can reach, for short stretches, up to 120 km/h. prey, in order to escape, will have to take advantage of that very
The Siberian tiger reaches a maximum of 90 km/h, tied with moment of pause. A medium–sized dog can run almost twice as
the antelope. fast as a human, but only for 10 to 15 minutes, then it will have to
The more an animal’s size increases, however, the more its expel the accumulated heat through its breath.
speed decreases. However, there are very fast large animals: the On the other hand, the animals capable of running faster
ostrich can weigh up to 150 kilograms and run at 70 km/h for sev- than humans and are able to do so for a long time, are horses,
eral kilometers; the grizzly bear can reach 56 km/h, the elephant with records of 70 km/h. It makes sense that man would domes-
40 km/h. Does it seem slow? Bolt, the current men’s 100–meter ticate them for centuries to make their speed and endurance a
record holder, has ‘only’ achieved 44.72 km/h. winning weapon to his survival.
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