# The locomotor kinematics of Asian and African elephants: changes with speed and size

> Can an elephant run? Filming about 2400 strides from 62 Asian and African elephants, from a baby to adults of over 4.6 tonnes, researchers found that elephants keep the same walking footfall pattern at every speed and never lift all four feet off the ground, yet still reach 6.8 m/s. Their springier hind legs at speed hint at a hidden change of gait, and the study suggests that tales of elephants charging at 11 m/s are exaggerated.

Summary by Kersey Lawrence, Original Wisdom. Updated 9 November 2026. Page: https://www.originalwisdom.com/tracking-literature/2006-hutchinson-schwerda-locomotor-kinematics-asian-african/

## Citation and access

- **Authors:** John R. Hutchinson, Delf Schwerda, Daniel J. Famini, Robert H. I. Dale, Martin S. Fischer and Rodger Kram
- **Year published:** 2006
- **Journal or source:** Journal of Experimental Biology
- **Full citation:** Hutchinson, J. R., Schwerda, D., Famini, D. J., Dale, R. H. I., Fischer, M. S. and Kram, R. 2006. The locomotor kinematics of Asian and African elephants: changes with speed and size. Journal of Experimental Biology 209(19): 3812–3827.
- **DOI:** 10.1242/jeb.02443
- **Access status:** Hosted (freely available elsewhere)
- **PDF:** https://www.originalwisdom.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/11/2006_Hutchinson_and_Schwerda_etal_the-locomotor-kinematics-of-asian-and-african-elephants-changes-with-speed-and-size.pdf

## Tags

- **Species:** Mammals > African elephant; Mammals > Asian elephant
- **Region:** Europe > Germany; Asia > Thailand; Europe > United Kingdom; North America > United States
- **Tracking:** Gaits
- **Behaviour and ecology:** Behaviour; Movement
- **Methods and technology:** Linear regression
- **Data type:** New field data
- **Observer qualification:** Not needed
- **Discipline:** Behaviour and ecology
- **Year published:** 2006

## Detailed keywords

- **Species:** Studied: Asian elephant (Elephas maximus) and African bush or savanna elephant (Loxodonta africana); the authors exclude the African forest elephant (Loxodonta cyclotis) from “African elephants”. Compared with published data: horses (including Icelandic ponies and other tölting horses), rhinoceroses, dogs and cows. Extinct relatives discussed: mammoths (Mammuthus spp.), mastodons and deinotheres.
- **Location and habitat:** Captive and working elephants on level trackways about 30 m long: Colchester Zoo (Stanway, United Kingdom); Have Trunk Will Travel (Perris, California, USA); Six Flags Marine World (Vallejo, California, USA); Indianapolis Zoo (Indiana, USA); Thüringer Zoo (Erfurt, Germany; spelled “Ehrfurt” in Table 1); 42 Asian elephants in Thailand (Thai Elephant Institute acknowledged). No wild elephants.
- **Topics:** locomotion, gaits, footfall pattern, lateral sequence footfall, singlefoot, amble, walk versus run, gait transition, aerial phase, duty factor (the fraction of a stride each foot is on the ground), stance and swing times, stride length and stride frequency, limb phase, Froude number (a size-free measure of speed), hip and shoulder movement, limb compliance (springiness), maximal speed, body size and scaling, dynamic similarity, juvenile versus adult elephants, comparison with tölting horses and rhinoceroses, mammoth and fossil elephant locomotion, early detection of lameness and musculoskeletal disease in captive elephants.
- **Statistics or models:** General linear model (STATISTICA) with speed as the independent variable and species as a factor; least-squares best-fit curves (linear, logarithmic, power) by highest R²; Reduced Major Axis (Model II) regression; 95% confidence intervals; comparison with published scaling equations. Significance at P<0.05. Inconsistencies in the paper: (1) the summary gives a body mass range of 116 to 4632 kg and the Fig. 7 caption calls the smallest elephant 116 kg, but Table 1 lists the smallest (Kedar) at 119 kg; (2) the text gives the maximal dimensionless speed as 1.8 (Froude number 3.4), while Table 2 gives a maximum of 1.90 for Asian elephants; (3) the list of symbols defines swing phase duration as “(i.e. stance time)”, an apparent typo.
- **Data type:** New field data: 602 video-recorded trials (299 Asian, of them 235 in Thailand; 303 African: 197 in Germany, 62 in California, 24 in Indiana and 20 in England), about 2400 strides, plus 19 published trials for two Asian elephants (Christian et al. 1999), giving 62 elephants (48 Asian, 14 African) and 621 trials. Body masses of the Thai elephants were estimated; the others were weighed on a truck scale. Funding years given as 1998 to 2006; exact recording dates not given.

## Synopsis

### 1. What they did

How elephants move has long been argued over. Do they only walk, or do they run? How fast can they go? Writers have claimed speeds of up to 11 or even 13 metres per second (m/s) for African elephants, with little evidence. Without good data on normal elephant movement, it is also hard to spot when a captive elephant is moving abnormally, which can be an early sign of disease in the limbs or feet.

The authors filmed elephants moving freely over level trackways about 30 m long:

- The elephants. 60 elephants (46 Asian and 14 African bush elephants), from a 119 kg baby to adults of over 4600 kg, at zoos and facilities in the USA, England and Germany, and 42 working elephants in Thailand. They added published data for two more Asian elephants, for 62 in all.

- Getting different speeds. Most elephants were led by trainers; some were ridden by their mahouts or moved on their own. For fast trials they were encouraged with playful chasing, friendly elephants waiting at the end of the track, food rewards, noise and cheering, never with pain.

- Measuring each stride. Joints on the right side were marked with paint or reflective markers. Video of the central 10 m was used to time each foot’s touch-down and lift-off and to follow the hip and shoulder. Altogether about 2400 strides from 621 trials were measured.

- Analysis. They looked at how footfall pattern, the share of each stride a foot is on the ground (duty factor), stance and swing times, stride length and stride frequency change with speed and body size, compared the two species, and compared elephants with predictions for other animals.

### 2. What they found

Footfall pattern

- Every elephant, at every speed, used the same lateral sequence footfall pattern: left hind, then left front, then right hind, then right front. None ever trotted, paced, galloped or switched to another pattern.

- As speed rose, the four footfalls became more evenly spaced in time, moving toward a “singlefoot” where each foot lands a quarter of a stride after the last.

- Elephants never had all four feet off the ground at once. At slower speeds at least two feet were always down; above a Froude number of about 1 there were growing periods with only one foot on the ground.

Duty factor and timing

- The share of each stride a foot spent on the ground fell with speed, levelling off at the fastest speeds. The lowest value was 0.37, in a young elephant, well below earlier published values for elephants (0.49 and above).

- Front feet stayed on the ground slightly longer than hind feet in over 90% of trials, so the hindquarters reached a brief airborne phase (both hind feet off the ground) at slower speeds than the forequarters.

- Stance and swing times dropped steeply at first, then levelled out. Elephants sped up mainly by taking quicker strides, but at the fastest speeds they relied more on longer strides.

Speed and size

- The fastest elephant was a large Asian bull in Thailand (about 2790 kg) at 6.8 m/s (about 15 mph). The Thai elephants, trained for speed, were the fastest overall.

- The fastest African elephant, being chased by another, reached 5.9 m/s, close to many Asian elephants.

- Top speed did not change obviously with body size: even young elephants of about two years could move as fast as adults. But smaller elephants were relatively more athletic, with relatively longer and quicker strides and lower duty factors.

- At any given speed, smaller elephants took shorter, quicker strides.

Hip and shoulder movement

At slow speeds the hip and shoulder rose then fell during each footfall, like a stiff-legged walk. At fast speeds (around a Froude number of 1) the hip instead dipped then rose, with more bending at the hip and knee, while the shoulder kept its walking motion. Vertical movements stayed small, about 4% to 9% of hip height.

Asian versus African elephants

The two species differed statistically in several stride measures, but the differences were very small. Their footfall timing did not differ.

### 3. What they concluded

- Elephants never switch to a trot or gallop and never have all four feet off the ground, so in the classical sense they do not run. But several lines of evidence suggest their limb mechanics change near a Froude number of 1, toward a springier, more compressed hind limb, with the hindquarters and then forequarters gaining brief airborne phases. They prefer not to call fast elephants truly running until force-plate data are available.

- The claimed speeds of 9.5 to 11 m/s for African elephants are probably exaggerations, from speedometer and parallax errors and the excitement of a charging elephant. African elephants’ near-maximal speed is most likely about the same as Asian elephants’.

- Earlier estimates of bone stress in fast-moving elephants are probably too low, because elephants reach lower duty factors than previously thought.

- Very large elephants (over 4000 kg) might lose the ability to reach their fastest gait; more study of the largest elephants is needed.

- Elephants match many scaling predictions for other four-legged animals, but are unusual in keeping a walking footfall pattern at fast speeds. Mammoths and other extinct elephants probably moved in a similar way.

- These data set out what normal elephant movement looks like, which can help keepers spot abnormal movement and early limb disease in captive elephants.

### 6. Other technologies, skills or innovations

- Video at 50 to 200 frames per second, digitised in Peak Motus or SiliconCOACH software, with thigh length used to scale the images.

- White tempera paint markers (outlined in black) or infrared-reflective motion capture markers on the joints.

- Foot-on was scored when the foot stopped moving forward and foot-off when it began moving forward or upward, supported by preliminary foot-mounted accelerometer data.

### 7. Implications for conservation (from the paper)

- Knowing normal elephant kinematics allows abnormal movement to be identified, which could aid early diagnosis of musculoskeletal disorders in captive elephants, some of which end in euthanasia.

### 8. Implications for tracking (Original Wisdom's observations)

_These are Original Wisdom's observations, not the authors'._

- The study describes the footfall sequence that produces elephant track patterns: left hind, left front, right hind, right front at all speeds, with each front foot landing about 15% of a stride after the hind foot on the same side at slow speeds and about 25% at fast speeds. Since elephants never change to a trot or gallop, a tracker reading speed from elephant trails would look for changes in stride length and spacing rather than a change of track pattern.

- Stride length relative to leg length roughly tripled from the slowest to the fastest speeds, and at a given speed smaller elephants take shorter strides, so both size and speed shape the trail.

## Cite this summary

Lawrence, K. 2026. Summary of: The locomotor kinematics of Asian and African elephants: changes with speed and size (Hutchinson and Schwerda et al., 2006). Original Wisdom, Tracking Literature. https://www.originalwisdom.com/tracking-literature/2006-hutchinson-schwerda-locomotor-kinematics-asian-african/