Fastest animals

This is a list of the fastest animals in the world, by types of animal.

Fastest organism
The peregrine falcon is the fastest bird, and the fastest member of the animal kingdom, with a diving speed of over 300 kph. The fastest land animal is the cheetah. Among the fastest animals in the sea is the black marlin, with uncertain and conflicting reports of recorded speeds.

When drawing comparisons between different classes of animals, an alternative unit is sometimes used for organisms: body length per second. On this basis the 'fastest' organism on earth, relative to its body length, is the Southern Californian mite, Paratarsotomus macropalpis, which has a speed of 322 body lengths per second. The equivalent speed for a human, running as fast as this mite, would be 1300 mph, or approximately Mach 1.7. The speed of the P. macropalpis is far in excess of the previous record holder, the Australian tiger beetle Rivacindela hudsoni, which is the fastest insect in the world relative to body size, with a recorded speed of 1.86 m/s, or 171 body lengths per second. The cheetah, the fastest land mammal, scores at only 16 body lengths per second.

Fish
Due to physical constraints, fish may be incapable of exceeding swim speeds of 36 kph. The larger reported figures below are therefore highly questionable: