🐺
African wild dog
Lycaon pictus
Carnivores · Endangered
vs
🐃
Cape buffalo
Syncerus caffer
Mammals · Near threatened
2 clips name both of them
5.4 million views between them.
Cape buffalo outweighs African wild dog 27× — 646 kg against 24.3 kg.
To scale
Grid at 50 cm
50 cm
1 m
1.5 m
2 m
Silhouettes: PhyloPic — Jan A. Venter, Herbert H. T. Prins, David A. Balfour & Rob Slotow (vectorized by T. Michael Keesey) (CC BY); others CC0.
African wild dog
0.69 m
at the shoulder
Human
1.70 m
full standing height
for scale
Cape buffalo
1.35 m
at the shoulder
Tale of the tape
Body mass
24 kg
🐺 African wild dog · COMBINE
646 kg
🐃 Cape buffalo · COMBINE
Shoulder height
0.69 m
🐺 African wild dog
1.35 m
🐃 Cape buffalo
Body length
1.02 m
🐺 African wild dog · COMBINE
2.96 m
🐃 Cape buffalo · COMBINE
Top speed
no figure yet
🐺 African wild dog
55 km/h
🐃 Cape buffalo
Maximum lifespan
17 yr
🐺 African wild dog · COMBINE
30 yr
🐃 Cape buffalo · COMBINE
Bars are sized against the larger of the two figures.
Animals caught on camera
Real footage of the animals on this site — hunting, fighting, and getting on with it.
Shared ancestry
The closest group they share is Laurasiatheria (superorder), home to 4,193 species.
They last shared an ancestor about 64 million years ago.
Estimates range from 58 to 76 million years; the figure above is the middle estimate.
About this estimate
Dates from Upham, Esselstyn & Jetz 2019, PLoS Biology 17:e3000494 (CC0).