My friend was telling me that any animal with four legs can out run any animal with two legs and another friend was telling me that a human can outrun a hampster. Who is correct?
I´ve seen the vermin in question run for dear life and no way in hell it could outrun even an ill trained human.
This is total bollocks. Firstly consider that kangaroos and ostriches are animals with two legs and both will readily outrun a dog. That alone is sufficient to debunk that ridiculous claim.
Of course ahuman can outrun a hampster. Our legs are at leats 20 times longer than a hampsters menaing that to achieve the same speed as a human a hamster would need to move its legs at somehting approaching the speed of sound.
Humans can in fact outrun large numbers of animals even over short distances, and the number of animals we can’t outrun over long distances can be literally counted on the fingers of Mickey Mouse’s hand.
Here’a a video of a hamster at full speed. A less than swift 7km/hr.
Some four legged animals are slooooow. Sloths and turtles are not exactly known for their lightning speed.
What is a hampster?
A small rodent who can take a picnic with it in its capacious wicker cheeks.
Most comonly called hamsters… they also power the SDMB running on little wheels attached to generators of some sort, or so the legend goes.
I’ve often wondered why the extraneous “p” shows up so often when the hamster is referenced on the Internet.
Sailboat
Replaced in the recent upgrade by capybaras, which action resulted in a massive labor action by the Worldwide Hamster Energizers Union. They currently picket the Reader’s headquarters in Chicago, though you may not notice them, given their size.
Fortunately, the former hamsters have a good pension plan, so they now kick back on a Bahama island drinking Coronas and playing dominoes.
As for the OP, as noted, even if hamsters could outrun us, turtles have four legs and they are somewhat deficient in the speed arena. Other examples can be offered. Sometimes, the answers are easy. 
Unless, of course, you come across the vocal minority that insists ‘insects aren’t animals!’ They possibly don’t believe turtles are either.
It’s so you’ll have a cute little furry pet ~and~ someplace to throw your dirty clothing.
Are you sure about this? I’ve chased wild rats before and haven’t been able to keep up. Similarly, my ferret can run about as fas as I can.
I am confused (even more so than normal). Surely you mean ‘…the number of animals we can outrun…’; can instead of can’t.
Everyone’s beaten me to it, but…
A gerbil doing it’s laundry?
When I was in elementary school the class gerbil (I know it isn’t the same as a hampster) had gone missing. A couple days later someone saw it and it went running like crazy but I caught it, it proceeded to bite me which caused me to involuntary hurl the thing at another kid which it also bit. 
Depends on what you mean by “long distances”, although I might amend it to “the number of animals that can outrun us”. Over a span of days or weeks, even roaming ruminants such as horses keep steady with us as their long-term stamina is outclassed by us. The only animals that have a definite advantage that I can think of off the top of my head is the wolf, although I’d admit that some ruminants might have an advantage on the margins.
No, Blake is referring to the fact that humans have a really tremendous amount of long-distance endurance compared to most other animals. While the common conceit is to regard humans as physically inferior to other species in virtually every regard, the fact is that most critters aren’t capable of running a marathon.
- Tamerlane
See Tamerlane’s response, and here’s a cite, e.g. http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/resolve?id=doi:10.1086/508695&erFrom=2392923687545134421Guest
I saw a great nature show that had this African guy running down a kudu until it just collapsed and waited for him to spear it. Unbelievable.
And from Wiki:
During the persistence hunt an antelope, such as a kudu, is not shot or speared from a distance, but simply run down in the midday heat. Depending on the specific conditions, hunters of the central Kalahari will chase a kudu for about two to five hours over 25 to 35 km in temperatures of about 40 to 42°C. The hunter chases the kudu, which then runs away out of sight. By tracking it down at a fast running pace the hunter catches up with it before it has had enough time to rest in the shade. The animal is repeatedly chased and tracked down until it is too exhausted to continue running. The hunter then kills it at close range with a spear.
The persistence hunt is still practised by hunter-gatherers in the central Kalahari Desert in Southern Africa, and David Attenborough’s documentary The Life of Mammals (program 10, “Food For Thought”) showed a bushman hunting a kudu antelope until it collapsed [2]. Also the Tarahumara natives of northwestern Mexico in the Copper Canyon area may have practiced persistence hunting.
Now I want a treadmill that’ll spin me around like that.