Photo by OSDG/Shutterstock.com

Flamingos spend a lot of time standing, swimming, and flying. Those are the main activities you’re used to seeing these fowls do. But when flamingos have someplace to be and there’s only dry land and no air space available, how fast can they run?

How Fast Can Flamingos Run?

Truthfully, it’s not very clear. It doesn’t seem as though anyone has clocked a flamingo running before, and so there isn’t really a record of how fast they can run. Flamingos don’t run all that often - if they have to cover long distances, they’d rather take to the skies - and their top speed on land isn’t noteworthy enough for measurement.

But flamingos do run, and they do it semi-regularly. Every time a flamingo takes off to fly, it runs a few steps forward to get some momentum going. How fast they go is relative to how fast the wind is moving - they generally take off against the direction of the wind, so the harder the wind, the faster and more intense the flamingo’s run must be.

Oftentimes, flamingos take flight from the water, and when they do, it looks as if they’re running on the water. It’s a fascinating thing to watch, especially to see thousands of flamingos do it at once.

If flamingos run otherwise, it’s probably not a good situation. Either a predator is upon them and running away is their only hope, or they’re in a fight with another flamingo and things are getting heated.

Look at the body of a flamingo. They were designed for standing and wading in water while casually catching some tasty algae and various crustaceans. They were not designed for running.

Photo by OSDG/Shutterstock.com

So, Your Answer to the Headline’s Question Is, You Don’t Know?

Yes.

That Isn’t Good Enough

Hey, man, lay off. Sometimes in life, you come up with a question, and the only answer you find is that there is no answer to find. And that’s okay.

But along the way, you accidentally find the answers to questions you weren’t asking and didn’t even know you wanted to ask.

You Have to At Least Make a Guess

Fine, you want a guess? Fine, here’s a guess: my guess is that the top running speed for flamingos is 15 miles per hour, which would make them slightly faster than pigs and eastern gray squirrels but a bit slower than polar bears and roadrunners. Does this seem reasonable to you?

It’s Not About What Seems Reasonable. It’s About Facts.

Well, here’s a verifiable fact: if you want to run while showing off your flamingo fandom, you won't do better than a pair of our flamingo-inspired sneakers, all designed with unique patterns that will impress any lovers of the fabulous fowl.

Run like a flamingo, minus the flying part!