Biomechanics: Are fast-moving elephants really running?

It is generally thought that elephants do not run, but there is confusion about how fast they can move across open terrain and what gait they use at top speed. Here we use video analysis to show that Asian elephants (Elephas maximus L.) can move at surprisingly high speeds of up to 6.8 m s−1 (25 km h−1) and that, although their gait might seem to be a walk even at this speed, some features of their locomotion conform to definitions of running.

• Publication year

  2003

• Venue

  Nature

• Publication date

  2003-04-03

• Fields of study

  Biology, Medicine, Computer Science, Environmental Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1038/422493aPMID 12673241
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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