What's it
like to be
an animal?

If you're six feet tall, 10 miles per hour probably doesn't feel very fast. But what if you were just six inches tall, like a squirrel? It would feel quite a bit faster. This site shows the actual speeds of animals and how fast they would be going if they were your size.

Animals: land air water insect
feet meters
Graph: top speed feels like

Imagine what it's like for a tiny insect to jump and fly as quickly as they do. They might cover 40 body lengths in a second. To a six-foot person that's 164 mph. This site tries to understand how it feels to move like a fly, a squirrel, a cat, a rhinocerous, or a falcon.

Flying Animals

California Condor California Condor
Gymnogyps californianus top speed 90 km/h
feels like 57.9 km/h
eider duck eider duck
Somateria mollissima top speed 113 km/h
feels like 209.7 km/h
frigatebird frigatebird
Fregata aquila top speed 153 km/h
feels like 119.7 km/h
Gannet Gannet
Morus bassanus top speed 100 km/h
feels like 98.9 km/h
mallard mallard
Anas platyrhynchos top speed 105 km/h
feels like 210 km/h
pigeon pigeon
Columba livia top speed 59 km/h
feels like 156.2 km/h
Red-breasted Merganser Red-breasted Merganser
Mergus serrator top speed 129 km/h
feels like 304.7 km/h
red-tailed hawk red-tailed hawk
Buteo jamaicensis top speed 195 km/h
feels like 283.1 km/h
Spur-winged Goose Spur-winged Goose
Plectropterinae gambensis top speed 142 km/h
feels like 255.6 km/h
White-throated Needletail White-throated Needletail
Hirundapus caudacutus top speed 170 km/h
feels like 805.3 km/h
Creative Commons BY-SA

Site concept, design, and creation by Alex Reisner. Source code and original content available under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 license. Animal descriptions are from Wikipedia and some silhouettes are from All Silhouettes.