Until now researchers had been able to gather data on the hunting habits of cheetahs only by studying the animals in captivity, or from direct — though relatively imprecise — observations of their movements in the wild. But Dr. Wilson and his team spent nearly 10 years designing and building a battery-powered, solar-charged tracking collar, one that uses an accelerometer, a gyroscope and GPS technology to monitor the animal’s movements. They attached these collars to five cheetahs in the Okavango Delta region and observed 367 of their hunting runs over six to nine months. The cheetahs ran as fast as 58 miles an hour, and their average speed was 33 m.p.h. High-speed runs accounted for only a small portion of the total distance covered by the cheetahs each day, the researchers found. They also found that a cheetah can slow down by as much as 9 m.p.h. in a single stride — a feat that proves more helpful in hunting than the ability to break highway speed records. A cheetah often decelerates before turning, and this enables it to make the tight turns that give it an advantage over its fast and nimble prey. “Its muscles are very powerful,” Dr. Wilson said. “They’re arranged in a way that gives it the ability to accelerate very quickly.” Along with those leg muscles, cheetahs have a flexible spine and big claws that give them a great deal of grip — “more grip than even a motorbike,” as Dr. Wilson put it. This anatomy helps the cats get their feet in the right positions to turn and maneuver. “If you’ve ever done snow skiing or skateboarding really fast, you realize that stability and maneuverability at high speeds are a real problem,” said Dr. John Bertram, a professor of medicine at the University of Calgary in Alberta, who was not involved in the study. Cheetahs have adapted to handle these challenges of physics in a way “we hadn’t expected,” he said.
Posted on: Wed, 12 Jun 2013 23:48:18 +0000
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