Built for Speed: A Year in the Life of Pronghorn
"Pronghorn are unquestionably the fastest mammal in North America. They accelerate explosively from a standing start to quickly reach a top speed close to 60 miles per hour. Pronghorn also can cruise at 45 miles per hour for several miles." Byers, professor of zoology at the University of Idaho, has spent 20 years closely observing pronghorn on the National Bison Range in Montana. His account of the animal's ways is thorough and fascinating. He tells of racing a male pronghorn with his truck; after two miles at 45 mph, the pronghorn "wasn't even breathing hard." Byers also recounts the difficulty of finding and catching fawns, which he does in order to tag them for long-term study. They hide in the grass until they are about three weeks old. "If I'm in reasonable physical condition, I can usually run down a 5-day-old fawn. A contest against a 7-day-old fawn is a toss-up, and a 10-day-old fawn can in effect thumb its nose at me with impunity."Editors of Scientific American