London, June 13 (ANI): A new study has found that the fastest animal on land rarely uses its top speed to capture prey.
A study of cheetahs has shown that instead, the animal uses incredible acceleration and rapid changes in speed when hunting.
The animals get this acceleration by exerting nearly five times more power than that of famed sprinter Usain Bolt during his record-breaking 100m run.
The findings amazed the scientist who led the research, Prof Alan Wilson of the Royal Veterinary College in Hatfield, UK.
"They are remarkable athletes - not just in terms of their speed, but also with their ability to accelerate and manoeuvre in capturing the prey," he told BBC News.
The top speed for a cheetah is often quoted is 65mph (105km/h). This was measured in 1965 by a scientist in Kenya timing the run of a semi-domesticated cheetah in Kenya running in a straight line on a firm dirt track.
But a well-fed zoo cheetah is not accustomed to running very fast - it does not need to - and so no one had seen zoo cheetah speeds greater than 40 mph (64km/h).
So for years, researchers wondered whether cheetahs might run much faster than 65 mph in the wild in order to capture prey.
Prof Wilson and his team at the college's Structure and Motion Laboratory decided to find out by following five animals in the wild for a year using tracking collars fitted with movement detectors and GPS systems.
They found that the cheetahs did indeed run very fast at times - close to 60mph - but only occasionally.
On most hunts they attained about 30 to 35 mph but they were accelerating and changing direction much more rapidly than has been seen in any other land animal.
They found that cheetahs could increase their speed by nearly 7mph (10km/h) in a single stride.
The researchers also found that cheetahs also have a very strong grip, so much so that they rip up the ground as they run.
They found it was the use of the animals' claws that enabled them to turn very sharply and to accelerate and decelerate very quickly.
The study is published in the journal Nature. (ANI)
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