How Fast Is a Pronghorn? America's Fastest Land Animal

What is a pronghorn’s top speed?

The pronghorn of the western North American plains is usually credited with a top speed of about 88 km/h (55 mph). Most of these figures come from people pacing running pronghorns with cars or trucks and reading the speedometer, so they are estimates rather than precise lab measurements. Still, observers across many decades have reported similar numbers.

What makes the pronghorn stand out is how speed changes with distance:

For comparison, an elite human sprinter peaks at about 44 km/h (27 mph) for a few seconds. A pronghorn can cruise faster than that for many minutes.

How does a pronghorn run so fast for so long?

The pronghorn’s body is built like an endurance athlete’s. Compared with other mammals of its size, it has a very large heart, lungs and windpipe, and its blood carries more oxygen-carrying red blood cells. Studies of pronghorns running on treadmills found that they can take in and use oxygen at a rate several times higher than expected for an animal of their size.

Other features help too:

• Light legs: long, slim legs with light bones and most of the muscle high up near the body, so each stride takes little energy.
• Cushioned hooves: two long, padded toes on each foot absorb shock on hard ground, and there are no dewclaws.
• Long strides: a running pronghorn covers several meters with each bound, with strides of up to about 7 m (23 ft) reported.
• Wide-open eyes: large eyes with a field of view of about 320 degrees let it spot danger early and choose an escape route.

Pronghorns also seem to run for the sake of it. Groups often race alongside passing vehicles or across open ground even when no predator is around.

Pronghorn vs cheetah: which is faster?

The cheetah is the faster sprinter. It reaches about 93–104 km/h (58–65 mph), as explained in How fast is a cheetah?, but a cheetah can only hold its top speed for a few hundred meters before it overheats and tires. Most cheetah chases are over in well under a minute.

The two never meet in the wild today. A cheetah would catch a pronghorn only in an ambush at close range; in any longer race, the pronghorn would win by a wide margin.

Why is the pronghorn so fast?

This is one of the great puzzles of North American wildlife. Today, no predator on the continent can come close to catching a healthy adult pronghorn in open country. Wolves, coyotes and cougars succeed mainly by ambush, in deep snow, or by targeting young, old or sick animals.

A popular explanation, set out in John Byers’ 1997 book on the species, is that the pronghorn is “running from the ghosts of predators past.” During the Ice Ages, North America had fast predators, including Miracinonyx, often called the “American cheetah,” which became extinct about 12,000 years ago. The idea is that the pronghorn evolved its speed to escape such hunters and has kept it ever since.

Other scientists question this. Fossil studies suggest that pronghorn relatives were already built for fast running before Miracinonyx appeared, and that the spread of open grasslands, where speed and efficient travel are valuable, may have been the main driver. The debate continues, and both factors may have played a part.

Speed and survival today

Speed protects adult pronghorns from most predators, but it does not help newborn fawns, which hide in vegetation for their first weeks. Most pronghorn deaths happen at this stage, mainly to coyotes, bobcats and golden eagles.

Speed also has a weak spot: pronghorns evolved on open plains with no barriers, and they rarely jump over fences. Instead they crawl under the bottom wire, which can be a dangerous bottleneck during migrations. Many wildlife agencies now raise the lowest strand or use smooth wire so pronghorns can pass. For more on what this unusual animal is, and why it is not a true antelope, read Is a pronghorn an antelope?, or see how it ranks in our list of the fastest animals.