How Fast Do Black Bears Run? Speed Facts and Information

How fast do black bears run? We can say roughly 18.75 miles per hour, but let’s first explain how we came to that conclusion. If you are an outdoors person and spend enough hours outside, you’re bound to run into some wildlife up close. One of the more concerning encounters we can experience is with bears, the most common being black bears. The American black bear (Ursus americanus) is indigenous to 40 out of the 50 states and all provinces/territories of Canada except for Prince Edward Island. While not all interactions with black bears are harrowing, they often can be if we don’t respect or understand their capabilities. Back to the question: how fast are black bears, anyway? To know this, we need to better understand black bears, their capabilities, and whether we need a friend slower than us the next time we go into the woods.

Overview of Black Bears

There are general estimates that 900,000 black bears currently roam North America. That might not sound like a lot when you consider just how large North America is, but that figure is likely a far cry from how many black bears constitute our land mass. Grizzly bears get an outsized share of attention because of their colossal bodies and violent temperament, but black bears are still formidable predators to humans. Black bears are:

Tremendous swimmers
Adept at climbing trees
Swift movers on land

How Fast Do Black Bears Run?

Top Speed of Black Bears

Wildlife biologists usually refuse to give a specific peak speed due to innumerable factors (weight of the bear, motivation, strength, slope of the ground, etc), but most all will agree that a strong, fit black bear can easily exceed 30 MPH. This applies to both sows (females) and boars (males). The anatomy of sows and boars is different, but their ability to move quickly for prolonged periods remains the same.

Average Running Speed

The science of identifying the average speed of a black bear over a prolonged distance isn’t much of a science at all due to a lack of data. It’s not like wildlife biologists can set up an experiment to repetitively measure this stat, but we do have some data to lean on. A cousin to black bears—grizzly bears—are known for top speeds of 40 MPH. Additionally, grizzly bears have been clocked at 25 MPH by tourists in Yellowstone National Park on several occasions – often over distances of 2 miles or more. With a little back-of-the-napkin math, we can identify the average speed of black bears to be approximated at 18.75 MPH.

Factors Affecting Black Bear Speed

Age and Size

Two determining factors for black bear speed are age and size. Black bears have a typical lifespan of 20 – 39 ½ years with the latter figure being the oldest wild black bear ever documented in Minnesota which eventually died of natural causes. Black bears can live for decades, but most die long before that. Many cubs die of predation, starvation, or injuries (e.g. falling from trees) long before adulthood. Even more die between the ages of 1 and 10 from human activity, like automotive accidents and hunting. Black bear size is often overestimated because of their shaggy fur coats, stocky body frames, and people’s general lack of experience seeing them. The average adult black bear weighs between 200 – 300 pounds, with sows generally being slightly smaller than boars. Black bears harvested by hunters tend to be young, and only weigh about 125 pounds. This is a classic case of “ground shrinkage” for hunters. While in your treestand or hunting blind, you believed the animal to be a lot bigger, but once you approach your harvest on the ground it is quite a bit smaller.

Terrain and Environment

Black bears adapt to a wide range of climates, and are known to live in environments from the frigid temperatures of Alaska to the scintillating summers of Florida. While they are adept at surviving in many different environments and terrains, they require several elements to be “happy” and remain somewhere:

Strong, stable water sources, like creeks, deep rivers, lakes or springs that are unlikely to dry up.
Edible vegetation, such as berries, and nuts. Black bears are also known to raid bird feeders, fruit trees, and crops like corn, squash, pumpkins, and wheat.
Meat, especially antelope, caribou, deer, elk, fish, rabbits, and squirrels.

Motivation

Like many of us, black bears don’t like to run, but—like many of us—they can go pretty fast when motivated, which comes in 3 forms:

The need to hunt
The desire to escape
The drive to defend

Black bears eat some fast animals—deer, antelope, livestock, etc.—and while the element of stalking and surprise is important, speed is often needed to run down their prey. Another motivation is escape. Some black bears will be scared into a retreat by more dominant boars, humans, or greater predators like grizzly bears. Even though black bears are tremendous predators, they often don’t sit at the top of the food chain. Finally, black bears could achieve their top speed through the motivation to defend themselves, or cubs in the case of a mothering sow.

Comparison with Other Bears and Animals

Black bears are fast in their own right, but they’re roughly in the middle of the pack compared to similar forest animals:

Fox Squirrel: 18 MPH
Sloth Bear (Slowest Bear Species): 20 MPH
Cottontail Rabbit: 22 MPH
American Black Bear: 30 MPH
Whitetail Deer Fawn: 35 MPH
Moose: 35 MPH
Brown Bear (Fastest Bear Species): 40 MPH
Mule Deer: 45 MPH
Caribou: 48 MPH
Pronghorn Antelope: 60 MPH

Aside from other bears, all of these animals are on the menu. So, this tells us that a black bear’s ability to stalk and be cunning in the wild is as important as its ability to run because much of what they want to eat is faster than them.

Why Do Black Bears Run?

Common Scenarios

Black bears do not exhibit the same aggressive, violent temperament as polar and grizzly bears where they attack unprovoked, but black bears are still a dangerous threat. The two most common scenarios which people see a black bear attack are:

You get between a sow and her cubs
You make a black bear feel threatened

These are the most common scenarios that will typically elicit the “fight, flight, or freeze” response seen in all animals. Aside from freezing, the other two will encourage that strong motivation to run at their highest speed possible. Either to retreat or attack as a final form of their self-defense.

Safety Tips for Encounters with Running Bears

A lot of people want to know how to fight a bear, but avoiding them, respecting their space, and not prompting an interaction is your best defense. If you accidentally make a black bear feel threatened or get between a sow and her cubs, this is what you should do to increase your likelihood of survival.

Appear Big – Wave your Arms, a Backpack, or Coat
Put Space and Objects between You and the Bear
Fight Back! Do NOT Play Dead

The tactics you need to survive a black bear encounter or attack are not the same as a grizzly bear. They are quite different:

The moment you see a black bear you should slowly move away; preferably to higher ground (like Obi-Wan Kenobi taught us).
Wave your arms and any gear you might be carrying. Talk to the bear so the bear hears and sees you are a human.
If possible, place objects between you and the black bear like large trees or a vehicle while maintaining sight of the bear.

If conflict with a black bear cannot be avoided, you must fight back. Assuming you do not have a firearm, you need to strike the black bear’s face: eyes, ear canals, and nose. These are the few areas that are soft and sensitive on all bears making them highly susceptible to pain, discomfort, mild disorientation, and a desire to retreat. Ideally, strong bear spray or a firearm could be deployed from a distance, but sometimes those tools cannot be accessed swiftly enough or you do not have them at all.

FAQs

How do you outrun a black bear?

You don’t. With black bears of varying size and age being able to run 30 MPH—and the fastest human in history, Usain Bolt, “only” clocking a speed of 27.33 MPH once—you cannot outrun a black bear. Moreover, you most certainly cannot outrun a black bear in its home turf, with the forest floor containing grass, logs, rocks, and debris.

What is the top speed of a black bear?

Although black bears are widely acknowledged for having a top speed of 30 MPH by many academic sources, one research group claims black bears can clock speeds as high as 37 MPH.

How fast can a 500-pound black bear run?

This is a question that prompts a classic lawyer response of, “it depends.” We discussed the average weight of a black bear is between 200 – 300 pounds. It is not uncommon for black bears to weigh in excess of 500 pounds though. In fact, the current world record American Black Bear harvest was 880 pounds from North Carolina 26 years ago. So, the musculoskeletal structure matters greatly here. Is this theoretical 500 pound black bear fat and prepped for hibernation? Or, is it a rare, powerful giant? With infinite unknown data points, it is likely our 500 pound black bear can achieve, even it its rather large size, the previously stated 30 MPH top speed.

What type of bear runs the fastest?

There are 8 broadly identified species of bears on the planet: Brown, Giant Panda, Andean, Sun, Sloth, American Black, Polar, and Asiatic Black⁶. Of those 8 species, the brown bear (grizzly) is the fastest at 40 MPH.

Conclusion

Black bears are common throughout the United States and they generally mean us no harm. There is only 1 fatal black bear attack documented per year in the United States. To be good stewards of the outdoor spaces we share with black bears, it’s best to:

Give them their space
Be respectful of their young
Take precautions if you know you’ll be in areas in which they are present, such as:
- Carrying bear spray
- Packing a firearm (if you’re trained)
- Researching the territory you’ll be in

Bears are fast. Faster than us. While the joke of bringing along a friend slower than you isn’t the best idea in bear country, it’s not the worst considering we have no chance of outrunning them (the bear, that is).

Adam Scepaniak