Following my obsession with these fictional animals, I decided to seek an answer to one of my biggest questions about them: Their speed.
Using the aether compass, I’ve determined that the squares on the in-game map to be exactly 50 yalms/yards by traveling from the line of one map square to the other.
Next, I timed how long it took my chocobo to make the same journey, using a stopwatch to take three separate times:
5.49
5.57
5.64
For an average of 5.57 seconds, rounded up to the nearest hundredth of a second.
50 yards / 5.57 seconds = 8.98 yards per second, or 8.211 meters per second.
Plugging this value into a converter gives us a speed of
18.37 MPH, or 29.56 KM/H
Not at all a bad speed for a chocobo! An ostrich of Earth can run at a sustained speed of 31 MPH, or
49.89 KM/H. That is without an armored rider on its back, making this estimate totally plausible for a chocobo, which could likely reach similar speeds unburdened.
Since all ground mounts move at the same speed, this would apply for Coeurls, Behemoths, etc. Though I have a feeling that the biomechanics of chocobos in particular were the model to decide the speeds of the game’s mounts.
I’ll do flying mounts next!