Humans as the Fastest Animals on Earth?

Felix Baumgartner's Supersonic Case

Conrad T Hannon

Jun 12, 2025

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Introduction: Redefining the Food Chain (Through Falling Really, Really Fast)

When we think of the fastest animal on Earth, images of a diving peregrine falcon or a sprinting cheetah usually come to mind. The peregrine falcon's stooping dive can reach up to 242 mph (389 km/h) under experimental conditions, and a cheetah can sprint at around 70 mph (112 km/h) in short bursts. These speeds are extraordinary by natural standards—impressive enough to make any reasonable biologist nod approvingly while checking boxes on their "nature is amazing" clipboard.

However, on October 14, 2012, a human being decided that evolution had been taking far too long and simply shattered all those records in a feat that seems to rewrite the definition of "fastest animal." Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner leapt from a balloon in the stratosphere and freefell at Mach 1.25 (1,357.6 km/h or 843.6 mph). In doing so, he became the first human to break the sound barrier without an engine—essentially making a member of Homo sapiens the fastest-moving lifeform on the planet. This provocative notion—that the human species, by extension, could be considered the fastest animal on Earth—invites both awe and the kind of semantic hairsplitting that would make a philosophy professor weep with joy.

The Ballsy Austrian's Stratospheric Stunt

Baumgartner's jump, part of the Red Bull Stratos project in 2012, was a milestone in aerospace and human endurance. Carried aloft by a helium balloon—because apparently walking up stairs wasn't extreme enough—Baumgartner ascended to about 39 km (24 miles) above New Mexico, effectively the edge of space. Donned in a pressurized suit that would make NASA jealous, he stepped out of his capsule and freefell back toward Earth with the casual confidence of someone who had clearly run out of conventional hobbies.

Within seconds, he accelerated beyond the normal terminal velocity of a skydiver (around 200 mph). The reason he could go so much faster is delightfully simple: at altitudes in the stratosphere, the air is extremely thin, providing far less drag than at lower altitudes. Exploiting this atmospheric inconvenience, gravity pulled him into a supersonic plunge that would make Newton himself do a double-take. Baumgartner's maximum vertical velocity was measured at 1,357.6 km/h (843.6 mph)—roughly Mach 1.25, well above the speed of sound at that altitude.

In that moment, Felix Baumgartner became the first human to break the sound barrier in freefall, without any engine or vehicle pushing him—unless you count gravity, which has been remarkably consistent in its performance reviews. He exceeded supersonic speeds for approximately 30 seconds, during which time his body was essentially plummeting through the atmosphere faster than a rifle bullet travels. His heart rate remained below 185 beats per minute, which is frankly disappointing—you'd think breaking the fundamental laws of human locomotion would at least get your pulse up.

How Human Speed Stacks Up Against Nature's "Champions"

To answer whether this makes humans "the fastest animal," we must compare Baumgartner's 843.6 mph descent with the fastest speeds known in the animal kingdom. Prepare to witness the biological equivalent of bringing a rocket launcher to a knife fight:

The Traditional Speed Kings (Now Demoted to Speed Dukes)

Peregrine Falcon – Often cited as the fastest creature on Earth, peregrine falcons can reach about 242 mph (389 km/h) in experimental dives, though some sources note that radar tracks have never confirmed these kinds of speeds, with the highest reliably measured being 114 mph (184 km/h). Either way, Baumgartner's fall was roughly 3.5 times faster than even the most generous falcon estimates—a staggering gap that suggests Mother Nature needs to step up her game.
Golden Eagle – Another fast raptor that can dive at around 150-200 mph. Impressive if you're a medieval peasant, but still only about one-quarter of Felix's speed.
Brazilian Free-Tailed Bat – The fastest level-flying mammal, clocked at around 100 mph in straight flight. This recent discovery proves that even bats can outpace most birds in horizontal flight, though it's still barely 1/8 of Baumgartner's velocity—which is roughly equivalent to comparing a bicycle to a supersonic jet.
Cheetah – The cheetah is the fastest land animal, capable of running around 70 mph (112 km/h) in short bursts. Felix's freefall was over 12 times faster than a cheetah's gallop, making the poor spotted cat look like it's stuck in traffic.
Black Marlin – One of the fastest swimmers, with estimates up to 80 mph when striking at prey. Even in water—which is far denser than air and therefore much more forgiving of ego-bruising comparisons—no fish comes remotely close to hundreds of mph.

The numbers don't lie, even when we wish they would: no known animal comes anywhere near the 1,357 km/h that Felix Baumgartner reached. The gulf is so wide it's practically geographical. As one science commentator noted with admirable restraint, "The fastest any animal has ever traveled was 843.6 mph, and it was a human—Felix Baumgartner." Even though humans have achieved far greater speeds inside machines—Apollo 10 astronauts hit 24,791 mph during reentry—those astronauts were essentially very expensive cargo. Baumgartner had no engine thrusting him and no cockpit shielding him; his body was in free motion through the air, making his achievement more directly comparable to an animal in flight (if animals had the foresight to pack parachutes).

The Philosophical Rabbit Hole: Can Technology-Enhanced Speed Count?

Baumgartner's supersonic dive raises the kind of philosophical question that keeps ethicists awake at night: Can we attribute such an achievement to "humans" as a species, given the use of technology and external aids? Traditional lists of fastest animals consider an organism's natural, self-propelled abilities—the biological equivalent of drug testing in sports, but with more feathers and significantly fewer scandals.

By strict natural standards, humans are thoroughly unimpressive. We are outrun by antelope, outswum by fish, and so thoroughly outflown by birds that early humans probably developed tools specifically to deal with the embarrassment. Without assistance, the fastest a person can run is about 28 mph (like Usain Bolt's sprint), and in normal skydiving freefall, human terminal velocity tops out around 120-200 mph, depending on body posture. Those numbers place us somewhere between "moderately concerning if chasing you" and "would lose a race to an angry house cat."

So, is it fair to call humans the fastest species just because one Austrian had the audacity to fall from space with style?

The "Tools Are Natural" Defense

One way to approach this philosophical minefield is to recognize that tool use and technology are as inherent to human nature as echolocation is to bats or venom is to snakes. The human animal is not particularly fast, strong, or agile compared to most predators and prey; our evolutionary advantage has always been our oversized brains and opposable thumbs. With that intelligence, we create extensions of ourselves—clothing, tools, machines—that vastly expand our capabilities, often in ways that make other species quietly resentful.

From this perspective, Baumgartner's pressure suit and balloon are simply extensions of the human organism, much like a spider's web is an extension of the spider or a hermit crab's borrowed shell extends its body. If a spider could somehow launch itself to the stratosphere on a silk line and drop at Mach 1 (which would be frankly terrifying), we might credit the spider species with that feat. Likewise, Baumgartner's jump can be seen as a natural outcome of human ingenuity—an achievement of Homo sapiens as a whole, using our hallmark adaptations of innovation and chronic dissatisfaction with physical limitations.

Our "natural" ability is to transcend our biological limits through invention, thereby redefining what is possible for an animal to do. It's evolution by other means—we simply replaced "survive random genetic mutations over millions of years" with "figure it out over a weekend with enough caffeine and engineering degrees."

The "Everyone's Cheating Anyway" Argument

It's worth noting that many top animal speeds are achieved by leveraging the environment, not purely by muscular output. The peregrine falcon doesn't flap its way to 242 mph; it climbs high and then gravity does most of the work during the dive. In a sense, the falcon is also using an external "assist"—gravity and thin high-altitude air—much as Felix Baumgartner did.

The falcon's biology is superbly adapted to handle the dive: specialized nostrils to breathe at high speed, keen eyesight to target prey, and the kind of confidence that can only come from millions of years of successful aerial homicide. Humans, lacking such built-in adaptations (and frankly, the predatory instincts), crafted a pressurized suit, aerodynamic stability systems, and took a balloon to falcon-like heights to accomplish a similar gravity-powered dive.

The parallel is striking: both species needed to get high up (one by flapping, one by balloon), both oriented their bodies to minimize drag (the falcon tucks its wings, Baumgartner went head-down streamlined), and both relied on gravity to accelerate. The key difference is that the falcon's abilities evolved over millennia, whereas humans used knowledge and technology to achieve the same effect in about five years of planning. Philosophically, one could argue that either way, a living being traveled at that speed—so why not consider it the new pinnacle of animal achievement?

Counterarguments: The Purist Uprising

Critics—who presumably spend their weekends timing turtles and measuring snail acceleration—might argue: "Humans can't count as the fastest animal because Felix Baumgartner needed a spacesuit, a balloon, and other technology. Take all that away, and we're basically sophisticated apes with delusions of grandeur." By that reasoning, only an animal's innate, unaided locomotion should count, which would mean discounting any creature that uses tools, environmental advantages, or even particularly clever tactics.

This strict division between "natural" and "technologically aided" is appealingly clean but suspiciously arbitrary. When a chimpanzee uses a stick to fish for termites, or an otter uses a rock to smash open clams, we don't disqualify them for equipment violations—we recognize tool use as part of their behavioral repertoire. A pressure suit and balloon can be seen as part of the human behavioral repertoire, albeit a particularly sophisticated and expensive part.

Another counterargument involves the distinction between self-powered and gravity-assisted speed: "Baumgartner's speed wasn't self-powered; he was falling, not running or flying under his own power." True—but again, consider the falcon: during the fastest part of its dive, it isn't flapping either; it's essentially falling with style. Gravity is the engine for both the falcon's stoop and Baumgartner's skydive. The falcon did exert effort to get up high (just as Felix's balloon expended energy to lift him), but the record speed itself comes from controlled falling.

If we insisted on "self-propelled horizontal speed" as the only valid criterion, the fastest might be the Brazilian free-tailed bat at around 100 mph in level flight—and humans would again lag embarrassingly behind. But the common practice in declaring the fastest animal has always been to consider whatever method the animal naturally uses to achieve maximum velocity. By analogy, using a high-altitude jump is now one method humans can use to achieve maximum velocity, even if it requires more equipment than a standard biological warranty covers.

The Vehicle Distinction

Some might worry that if we count Baumgartner, why not declare humans the fastest because of rocket planes or cars? However, there's a meaningful distinction here: in a jet or spacecraft, it's really the machine that's fast—the human inside is along for the ride, protected from the true effects of speed by several tons of metal and engineering. Felix Baumgartner's jump is different: his physical body was hurtling through the air at over 800 mph, exposed to the aerodynamic forces with only a suit for protection. There was no engine throttling him forward—just Earth's gravity and his own mass responding to it. Baumgartner was the projectile in that moment, not a passenger.

This makes his feat much more comparable to an animal's speed record than sitting in a rocket sled would be. Therefore, if any human achievement merits inclusion in the animal speed rankings, it is Baumgartner's unpowered, human-body-only freefall.

Conclusion: The Fastest Animal Might Just Be Us

Felix Baumgartner's supersonic freefall in 2012 fundamentally expanded the conversation about speed in the natural world—and possibly gave every other species a collective inferiority complex. By reaching Mach 1.25 (843.6 mph) in open air, he demonstrated that a human—with the right preparation and a healthy disregard for conventional wisdom—can move faster than any creature that has ever lived. This places the human species in a unique light: thanks to our ingenuity, we have achieved what evolution alone did not grant us.

Calling humans "the fastest animal on Earth" is admittedly a conceptual stretch that would make a yoga instructor wince. It challenges how we define an animal's capabilities and forces us to confront uncomfortable questions about where biology ends and technology begins. If we strictly mean "under their own biological power," humans don't qualify—we're still the species that gets winded climbing a flight of stairs. But if we recognize that our power as a species lies in combining biology with technology and sheer bloody-mindedness, then Homo sapiens has indeed claimed a new superlative.

The data is undeniable, even when it feels slightly absurd: no cheetah, falcon, or marlin comes close to Mach 1. And Baumgartner's leap was not an isolated fluke; it was the fruit of human curiosity, engineering skill, and what can only be described as professionally calibrated recklessness—traits as inherent to us as speed is to a cheetah or echolocation is to a bat.

Perhaps it's fitting that the species which invented record books now holds the crown for the fastest movement by a living creature. In a very real sense, Baumgartner's supersonic dive proves that when it comes to speed, humans have become the peregrine falcon's only true rival—and indeed have flown right past it with the kind of technological audacity that our ancestors could only dream of while being chased by actual fast animals.

The fastest animal on Earth just might be us—assuming you don't mind a little creative interpretation of what "natural" means and you're comfortable with the idea that sometimes the best way to be fast is to fall really, really well.

Author's note: While this piece argues for humans as the fastest animals, it should be noted that Felix Baumgartner has since retired from professional daredevilry and now works as a helicopter pilot and firefighter—presumably having realized that once you've broken the sound barrier with just your body, traditional hobbies tend to feel rather tame.

References

Britannica Encyclopedia: "Peregrine falcon | Speed, Diet, & Facts." Peregrine falcon diving speeds up to 300 km/h (186 mph), with some experimental evidence suggesting higher speeds. https://www.britannica.com/animal/peregrine-falcon
Guinness World Records: "Fastest bird (diving)." Peregrine falcon experimental dive recorded at 242 mph (389.46 km/h) by falcon "Frightful" in 1999. https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/70929-fastest-bird-diving
Wikipedia: "List of birds by flight speed." Comprehensive data on avian velocities, noting peregrine falcons can exceed 320 km/h (200 mph) in dives. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_birds_by_flight_speed
Fox News: "Supersonic skydiver Felix Baumgartner fell at 843.6 mph: Mach 1.25." Official speed verification from Red Bull Stratos project. https://www.foxnews.com/science/supersonic-skydiver-felix-baumgartner-fell-at-843-6-mph-mach-1-25
Wikipedia: "Felix Baumgartner." Comprehensive record of Baumgartner's achievements, including FAI-ratified records for maximum vertical speed (1,357.6 km/h), exit altitude (38,969.4 m), and vertical freefall distance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_Baumgartner
Guinness World Records: "Felix Baumgartner: First person to break sound barrier in freefall." Official recognition of supersonic freefall achievement. https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/records/hall-of-fame/felix-baumgartner-first-person-to-break-sound-barrier-in-freefall
Red Bull Stratos Official: "Felix Baumgartner | Red Bull Stratos Inside View." Technical specifications and official project data, including maximum vertical speed and physiological monitoring. https://felixbaumgartner.com/worlds-fastest-man/
Physics World: "Falcon's high-speed dive generates forces needed to catch agile prey." Research from University of Groningen and Oxford University on peregrine falcon aerodynamics and hunting strategies. https://physicsworld.com/a/falcons-high-speed-dive-generates-forces-needed-to-catch-agile-prey/
HowStuffWorks: "How do peregrine falcons fly so fast?" Analysis of peregrine falcon anatomy and flight mechanics. https://animals.howstuffworks.com/birds/peregrine-falcon-speed.htm
Various sources: Cheetah running speeds (70 mph), Brazilian free-tailed bat flight speeds (100 mph), black marlin swimming speeds (80 mph), and other comparative animal velocities from multiple zoological and wildlife research databases.