In the race of cheetah, all in acceleration - Le Figaro

Featuring a powerful musculature, the world’s fastest mammal known especially to stop suddenly and change direction quickly.

The cheetah is the fastest mammal in the world. This assertion was based on observations made previously in wildlife documentaries in Africa.

To date, the only real study was conducted in 1965 in Kenya by a veterinarian using a Range Rover pulling a piece of meat. The animal, a tamed cheetah, had the opportunity to sprint three times on a track in a straight line 200 meters long. According to Craig Sharp, who published the results thirty years later, the cheetah can reach a speed of 29 meters per second, or about 105 km / h. This is much more than the time recorded by the greyhounds (65 km / h), horses (68 km / h) or human (43.2 km / h for the record Usain Bolt over 100 meters) high.

But in nature, the performance of cheetahs are actually smaller. It is shown a study led by Alan Wilson, University of London, who has equipped five cheetahs (three females and two males) with a high-sensitivity GPS collar for almost a year and a half north of Botswana . The maximum recorded the fastest five cats speed was 93 km / h against 72 km / h for the less efficient.

10 km / h acceleration in a wake

When they hunt, most of the time, cheetahs do not exceed the speed of 53.5 km / h.

However, thanks to the accelerometers, gyroscopes and magnetometers to board on each necklace, British researchers found that cheetahs are endowed with a capacity of frontal and lateral acceleration unmatched in terrestrial animals. In this area, for example, their performance is two times higher than those of greyhounds. A cheetah can, in one process, increase its speed of 10 km / h or decelerate from 15 km / h.

Their extraordinary musculature (should imagine Usain Bolt four times more muscular) and powerful non-retractable claws also help them curb their race brutally and quickly change the direction of their race. As well as the speed, so are their acceleration and deceleration capabilities that allow them to catch their prey. However, this does not give them a decisive advantage because the deer fail to catch more prey in four.

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large predators

“Our study is the first to provide information on the movements and movements used by a predator to hunt,” say Alan Wilson and his team have provided the collars of all new measuring devices themselves highly sophisticated. The “necklace Wilson”, as already known, should change our understanding of animals in their natural environment.

To verify the accuracy of the GPS used for the study published Thursday in Nature , researchers have run a greyhound on a beach, which allowed them to compare their position recorded by the device with traces of their feet on the sand.