stride

The distance between successive prints of the same foot — the length of one complete step cycle. Stride tells you how fast the animal was moving and, combined with track size, helps narrow the species. A walking coyote has a stride of roughly 12 to 14 inches; a walking mountain lion, with its longer body and shorter legs, may have a similar stride but a very different track pattern. In a gallop, stride opens dramatically — sometimes four or five times the walking distance.