Cheetah vs Peregrine falcon: which is faster?

This comparison uses the ranked measurement on each page, and those two measurements are not the famous headlines. The cheetah side is Sharp's 1997 timing, 29 metres per second, the mean of three trials on a 201.2 metre course with a running start. The peregrine side is Alerstam's 1987 radar result: the maximum of the 10-second intervals during stoops was 39 metres per second, with the average stoop in the same study near 25 metres per second. The verdict is computed from 29 and 39 after they are expressed in the same unit. The text does not write that multiple out by hand.

The number people expect for the falcon is 389 kilometres per hour. Guinness describes experimental dives reported at perhaps up to 389 kilometres per hour, or 242 miles per hour, including a 1999 dive by the peregrine Frightful with Ken Franklin from about 17,000 feet, and it also gives an estimated terminal velocity near 320 kilometres per hour. That 389 figure is stored as a claim. It is not the ranked speed and it is not an input to the verdict. Level flapping flight for the peregrine, in the 2007 radar supplement, is a mean equivalent airspeed of 12.1 metres per second in the Bruderer subset. That is a third, slower, verified measurement of a different flight.

The cheetah has the same split between a ranked trial and a lower field peak. Wilson's collars on wild cheetahs recorded 25.9 metres per second in hunts, and Garland used 110 kilometres per hour as a compiled estimate. Neither replaces Sharp in the comparison. A stoop and a running trial answer different questions. The page keeps them because both are the best-supported top speeds we currently rank, and the conditions on each entry say what was actually timed.