![]() ![]() ![]() The cheetahs were also able to slow down rapidly, absorbing energy at a rate up to three times greater than that known for the best-performing polo horses - animals that are bred to be agile. The data revealed the cheetahs’ acceleration powers to be up to 120 watts per kilogram - about double the power of the swiftest greyhounds and more than four times that of Usain Bolt during his record-breaking 100-meter sprint in 2009. But although the wild cheetahs did not run as fast as their captive kin, they demonstrated other athletic abilities that researchers had not been able to measure before. Moreover, most hunts involved only moderate speeds, with the average top speed coming in at 14.9 meters per second. Out of a total of 367 runs, the fastest speeds achieved by the five individuals were 25.9, 25.4, 22.0, 21.1 and 20.1 meters per second - all well short of the record set by captive cheetahs. The 17 months spent collecting the data was the easy bit what posed the challenge was making sense of the data, which confounded expectations. The researchers then travelled to the Okavango Delta region of northern Botswana, where they used darts to sedate and collar five cheetahs. The collars proved to be astonishingly precise, down to a level of 0.2 meters. The team first tested the accuracy of their collars on a dog by letting the animal loose on a beach that way, the information collected could be cross-referenced with the paw prints left in the sand. But nobody had been able to determine whether the animals actually reach these speeds in the wild.Īrmed with lightweight solar-powered collars fitted with Global Positioning System and inertial-measurement technologies, a team led by Alan Wilson at London’s Royal Veterinary College has precisely tracked wild cheetahs during hunting (see page 185). 241, 493–494 1997), more than double the top speed achieved by a human sprinter. In zoos, captive cheetahs lured to run in a straight line can attain speeds of up to 29 meters per second - nearly 105 kilometers per hour ( N. Its success as a predator also hinges on its lightning reflexes and its ability to accelerate faster than a Ferrari.ĭetermining just how fast animals run is no easy task. But the first study to collect data on the animal’s movements in the wild reveals that, contrary to popular opinion, a cheetah’s sheer speed is not its only weapon when it comes to hunting. When a young antelope strays a little too far from the herd, the cheetah explodes out of the bush - and, with a burst of speed unrivalled in the natural world, brings down its next meal. ![]()
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