If you’ve ever wanted to see the pure athleticism and speed of a moose on display, look no further than this viral video out of Alberta, Canada.
Someone was driving around in the Gaylord Park area of St. Albert when they saw a female moose (called cows) running along the side of the road. They got up next to it with their car, matching the wild animal’s speed, and they were astounded to see that the sizable moose was easily keeping up with the vehicle.
In case you didn’t know, moose are the largest of all deer that are in the deer family, and their height and weight might surprise you. Males are typically bigger than females, though both genders are generally ginormous (that’s the scientific term for describing moose size). On average, a bull moose usually stands at 6 feet tall at their shoulders, and can even weigh up to 1,400 pounds.
So that’s a whole lot of mass that they are able to get moving at high speeds.
Moose are able to run up to 35 miles per hour, and much of that is thanks to their long legs. That top speed is usually just for short bursts (when they really need to get a move on), but as you’ll see in this video, it certainly appears that this cow was maintaining sprint speed for a very impressive amount of time.
Generally, if they need to get somewhere fast, they’ll set the cruise control at about 20 miles per hour. That’s relatively easy for a moose to maintain for long distances… but the female in this video was more so in “wind sprint” mode. After all, it was keeping up with the car on the road that sure sounded and looked like it was going 35 miles per hour (at least).
Towards the end of the video, the moose tries to make a tight turn down a dirt road, and it doesn’t handle that as gracefully as it did the straightaway. Still, it’s almost mesmerizing to watch an animal of that size move with such power and velocity. You definitely wouldn’t want to be in the way of a moose if it were sprinting like this one.
Check it out:
@nick_rogne See you in the fall#alberta#fyp ♬ original sound – ub1n0
That’s almost unbelievable… no wonder the video is going viral.
All of the social media users that have had this moose video hit their algorithm (sometimes the algorithm provides some gems, eh?) were blown away by the moose’s speed:
“Holy crap I didn’t realize how fast they were.”
“That moose is actually flying.”
“Man I bet it feels so good to be a moose just sprinting through the forest.”
“They do this in like five feet of snow too.”
“That m-f was MOVING.”
“People don’t understand how big moose are, and how impressive it is for them to run this fast.”
“Come on, man, I was waiting for you to show me this speedometer.”
Admittedly, that would have been great for the person working the camera to pull off.
