Pronghorn Can Sprint at 45 to 50 Miles per Hour

The pronghorn is faster than anything that hunts it today. The U.S. National Park Service says pronghorn can run sustained sprints of 45 to 50 miles per hour, and describes that speed as an adaptation to outrun an extinct cheetah. The predator is gone, but the speed remains. Together with keen vision, the Park Service notes, it makes adult pronghorn difficult prey for any natural predator. Pronghorn are a North American original. They are the surviving member of a group of animals that evolved in North America during the past 20 million years. Their horns are unusual as well. Pronghorn have true horns, but the sheaths are shed and grown again every year. Before European American settlement of the West, the pronghorn population was estimated at 35 million.