Tommies can reach speeds of 50 miles an hour.

With so many animals trying to eat them, it's no wonder the Thomson's gazelle has evolved into such a swift creature: it can sprint along at 50 miles per hour. But the cheetah, which feeds on these gazelles, can catch them because the cat is even fleeter -- the fastest of all land animals, it has been clocked at 70 miles per hour. So how does a Tommie ever manage to escape a cheetah?

As you see in one of BORN TO RUN's many chase scenes, tommies are better at maneuvering, nimbly dodging from side to side as they try to elude a predator. The cheetah, although faster, is more of a "straight ahead" kind of animal, preferring to sneak up on its prey and then sprint straight in for the kill. It doesn't maneuver well. Plus, it can't maintain its top speed for very long. If a cheetah doesn't catch a tommie right away, it usually gives up the chase.

Many of the world's swiftest animals use their speed to catch food. Other speedsters on the Serengeti include the pronghorn antelope, which has been clocked at 61 miles per hour, the wildebeest at 50 miles per hour, the lion at 50 miles per hour, and zebras and hyenas at 40 miles per hour. Coyotes clock in at 43 miles per hour and racing greyhounds at 39 miles per hour. Humans, by contrast, fall in at rather paltry 27 miles per hour. Even a rabbit is faster, at 35 miles per hour.

Some creatures even leave the cheetah in the dust. The world's fastest flyer, the Spine-tailed swift, zooms along at 105 miles per hour. It does nearly everything while flying, from catching food to mating. Not far behind is the racing pigeon, which can maintain speeds of 89 miles per hour. The peregrine falcon can't keep up with those two in long flights, but it beats them at diving. Once it spies the small birds it eats, it folds back its wings and dives in for the kill at speeds of up to 150 miles per hour. The fastest swimmer is the sailfish, which can reach 67 miles per hour for short distances. Like the cheetah, it uses its sprinting speed to catch food. Not far behind are bluefin tuna at 65 miles per hour, and the swordfish, at 56 miles per hour.  The fastest insect? No surprise to city dwellers, it's the American cockroach, which can scurry 50 times its body length in a second.

On the other end of the scale, one of the slowest creatures around is the sloth. It moves through the trees at just one mile per hour. It's even slower on the ground, crawling along at 3/5 of a mile per hour. But even the slow-moving sloth leaves in its wake snails, which rev up to 3/10 of a mile per hour, and tortoises, which can manage only 1/5 of a mile per hour.

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