What Is the Fastest Animal on Earth?

We humans may not be the fastest but clearly we hold the title for being the dumbest.

Your all Pig Stupid!!!

#1.) I would say AT LEAST the Antelope is as fast as the Cheetah, it 's SILLY to say other wise when we all know that antelopes constantly run away from cheetahs when they are being chased, then the cheetah ALWAYS gets tired because Pronghorn Antelopes have so much more endurance it's not even comparable. Then cheetahs catch older Antelopes that get tired easier.

#2.) I've heard a story of a humming bird that was being chased by a Peregrine Falcoln. THE FUNNY THING IS THAT GUESS WHO SUDDENLY STARTED DOING THE CHASING!!!??? HA, the Humming bird did a fighter jet move...flew up... stopped and suddenly started chasing and ATTACKING the Peregrine Falcon!!! HA!!!!!!!!!!!!

#3.) As for INSECTS! I heard a story on T.V. about a mysterious insect in the U.S. in a certain state that some people would swear they saw. The story is that in the daytime, they would be outside doing whatever then something moving by them going soo fast they couldn't even tell what it was, they couldn't even follow that insect with their eyes. Finally photographers with super duper high speed cameras took it on film. It didn't have normall wings, but kind of slithered through the air like a snake with 2 long wings, not extending out, but attached to it from the front to the back.

-very interesting story, wish I knew more

The falcon is the fastest the fact that it uses gravity to increase speed is irrelevant, the cheetah runs up to 70 miles per hour the falcon up to 200mph so whats the problem.
Dave at the falcon foundation.

Considering that the white-tailed jackrabbit runs zigzag and not in an easier straight line, they ought to get the gold medal for speed. They've been clocked at 70 mph.

The arguement that the falcon shouldn't get credit for being the fastest animal because it uses gravity is flawed. The falcon generates it's altitude by itself and thus stores potential energy (remember physics class) and then releases this eneregy that it has produced itself during it's dive. And it can do this over and over again. The cheetah falling from the plane can only do it only once.

The cheetah generates it's speed through muscle power. So does the falcon -- it just stores it as potential energy and then it controls when it would like to release it. In addition, it does this in a controlled manner as this is the mechanism with which it hunts. It is a much more elegant display than "just a free fall".

Should we say the cheetah can't run 70mph if it happens to run down hill while doing it?

The fastest land animal is indeed the cheetah, at 60 mph. But in terms of body lengths per second, that's only, roughly 10 body-lengths per second on average, and 20 B.L.P.S. when sprinting after prey.

However, since my comment is about B.L.P.S., the Tiger Beetle dwarf that number at 171 B.L.P.S.

The fastest flying animal is the Peregrine Falcons at 323 B.L.P.S. on average, and 357 B.L.P.S. in an attack dive.

The fastest (discovered) swimming animal is the Copepod at 500 B.L.P.S., as it evades it's predators.

Now for the fastest living creature on Earth (or earth considering that it touches ground, and it's only form of locomotion is leaping, so it doesn't technically "run") is the flea. The flea, in one leap (up to 200 body lengths horizontally and 150 body lengths vertically), can move 13 inches. Don't know if you've ever seen a flea leap, but they do move rather quickly. The Flea moves at over 2000 B.L.P.S.

There you go, Fastest creatures on the planet.

Now, for those of you who would still complain about fact. lets scale the animals all up to the size of a cheetah.

Cheetah - 7 feet (with tail)
Tiger Beetle - 0.5 inches x 14 = 7 feet
Peregrine Falcon - 20 inches x 4.2 = 7 feet
Copepod - 0.079 inches x 1063 = 7 feet
Flea - 0.059 inches x 1423 = 7 feet

Now, we'll work with the animals at their fastest.

Cheetah - 68 mph
Tiger Beetle - 1539 mph
Peregrine Falcon - 3213 mph
Copepod - 4500 mph
Flea - (at least) 18000 mph

Now picture a 7 foot tall flea, leaping over 1000 feet, at 18000 mph. Now you know why fleas are 6 1000ths of an inch big.

I am holding in my hands the book "Copepods in Aquaculture", on page 91 it states that copepods can reach speeds of 800 body lengths/second, and have the ability to react in under 3 milliseconds. So if you consider relative speed, I think you would be hard pressed to find something, anything man made or organic that travels faster than that.

'What Is the Fastest Animal on Earth?'
The phrase 'on earth' would imply on land, but in the question it is 'Earth', not 'earth', which therefore means we are discussing the planet, not merely the ground.
The peregrine falcon is the fastest creature, to my knowledge - I have data claiming it reaches 190mph.
Cheetahs do not run this fast, certainly. However, if we were talking about land animals, the cheetah would obviously win, hands down.

Snails are, without a doubt, the fastest creatures in the world on land, water and in air...(There's probably some wickedly fast creatures in the ocean that we still don't even know about). Why would Snails need to be able to run so fast? The only animal that comes in a close second to the Snails amazing speed is an airplane!!!. In order to catch up with a meal that's as swift as the wind, the Snail had to develop the ability to run as fast, or faster than the airplane, or face the alternative - humiliated. Pretty strong motivation for practicing their wind sprints....

Firstly, may I say that the person that stated above 'gazelles are faster than cheetahs' are extremely wrong under all circumstances! The Cheetah must be faster than the gazelle in order to survive. The Thompson Gazelle is the cheetahs main prey and the cheetah must outrun the gazelle in order to catch it! And train cheetahs, Honestly? You can't even spell cheetah, or 'cheeta' as you put it.

Secondly, those which have argued that the peregrine falcon is the fastest animal on earth and wrong (to an extent). Yes, it takes credit for eing the fastest animal on earth, but it merely freefalls and does not generate speed, it lets gravity do that. So it cannot take credit for such a title, the cheetah self generates extreme speed on land with pure muscle power and immense strength in its legs. Therefore I have proven the cheetah is the fastest animal on earth!

You're playing with semantics. As if "on Earth" did not include anything airborne, haha. Suddenly on my flight from Washington DC to Boston I spend an hour no longer on Earth? No longer on land, certainly but the concept of Earth easily includes its surrounding atmosphere.

The fastest animal through artifice is man.
The fastest animal by natural means is the Peregrine Falcon,
and the fastest land animal by natural means is the Cheetah,
though the Sailfish through water can go almost as fast. Which quite honestly is way more impressive.

The Indo-Pacific Sailfish is the fastest fish with a speed of 68 mph(http://www.australianmuseum.net.au/fishes/faq/fastest.htm).

The Cheetah is certainly the fastest running animal in short bursts at 70 mph(http://www.extremescience.com/Cheetah.htm).

The Peregrine Falcon is the fastest in the use of its abilities to produce high speed and survive at 273 mph (gravity assist dive) (http://www.extremescience.com/fastinworld.htm).

But wait; if we include the falcon then we must admit that Man is the fastest We have used our God given abilities to go much faster than any animal can. The Apollo 10 astronauts traveled at 24,791 mph (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_10) on their return from the moon (gravity assist). Oh trick question, man is not an animal.

I read about copepods (not sure if that is spelled correctly), they are zooplankton and can zip along at 500 times their body length in less than a second. Compared to a cheetah that would be 2000 mph. I read that in a book called Sea Soup.

The peregrine most definitely can reach 180. watch this video

Ultimate Killers: Peregrine Falcon Sky Dive!

the peregrine falcon is the fastest animal on earth and can come close 179 miles per hour and it can't fly 180mph

From Cheetah Conservation Fund website: The cheetah is aerodynamically built for speed and can accelerate from zero to 40 mph in three strides and to full speed of 70 mph in seconds. As the cheetah runs, only one foot at a time touches the ground. There are two points, in its 20 to 25 foot (7-8 metres) stride when no feet touch the ground, as they are fully extended and then totally doubled up. Nearing full speed, the cheetah is running at about 3 strides per second.

Yes, the peregrine falcon often gets credit for being the fastest animal but one must remember that in the case of the cheetah it is all self-generated speed and when speaking of the peregrine falcon people are usually pointing out the speed it is free falling. I'm not sure how much self-generated speed a peregrine falcon has flying horizontally.