Linruuu - Linru ฅ^•ﻌ•^ฅ

LIFE IN THE FAST LANE

in the market for some weird animal facts? well, I’m happy to oblige. you look like a discerning customer with a real need for speed, so allow me to introduce you to one of Nature’s finest sports models! they’re lean, they’re mean, and they can go 0-60 in 3 seconds flat! and boy, that engine really purrs.

put the pedal to the metal, because it’s-

CHEETAH! he can really move! CHEETAH! with anxious attitude! CHEETAH! HE’S THE FASTEST THING ALIIIIIIIIVE

Cheetahs are large spotty cats built along the same lines as a Greyhound. (the dog, not the bus.) they’re found throughout sub-Saharan Africa and some parts of Asia, where they sprint around like maniacs and pose for tourists to their heart’s content. at least 75% of every Cheetah is limbs by volume, and they sport a pair of iconic black tear track markings that would make Gerard Way jealous.

you’ve probably seen them before on junk food packaging in your local grocery store, but their real claim to fame is that they’re the fastest land animal on the entire planet. vroom vroom!

the whole Dangerously Cheesy thing is just a side job.

there’s a surprising amount of really dang fast animals on this planet, (most are mammals, but none of then are hedgehogs.) but the Cheetah has them all beat for sheer ground speed alone. other animals can run further or for longer, but none can match the Cheetah’s absolutely insane landspeed record of 61 to 70 miles per hour. (ish.)

that’s an absolutely absurd amount of speed for something that has paws instead of wheels or wings. in fact, that’s even faster than some creatures who DO have wings! (those creatures probably feel pretty bad right now, and they should.) to give some perspective: if you’re a Cheetah, it’s straight-up fucking illegal to sprint in almost all of Illinois. (good luck arresting a Cheetah though, they’re bitey!)

you have the right to OW you have the right to remain silent OW STOP BITING ME

while it’s a known fact that Cheetahs are THE fastest mammal currently in existence on our beautiful planet, exactly how fast they are is a subject of some debate and also some academic hair-pulling. (there’s a surprising amount of hair-pulling in academia, both figurative and literal.) this is because it’s actually pretty difficult to a) motivate any animal to sprint at full speed for your own personal amusement, and b) calculate exactly how fast said animal is moving once you’ve motivated it into sprint mode.

methods for clocking the speed of a sprinting Cheetah have included solutions as fancy-schmancy sciencetech as radio-tracking GPS collars, radar guns, and carefully measured artificial courses, and also solutions as straight-up mad max bullshit as driving next to the sprinting Cheetah in a rusted-out truck and just having an intern watch the speedometer, or dragging bait behind a speeding car and having a different intern watch the speedometer. these methods give some very different results, as you might imagine.

there’s a surprising amount of straight-up mad max bullshit in science, because fancy-schmany sciencetech can only get you so far.

Cheetahs can only sustain this absolutely insane burst of speed for about thirty seconds, but that’s more than long enough for their purposes. Cheetahs mostly hunt antelope, who are slower but definitely no slackers in the speed department themselves. this often leads to suspenseful high-speed chases all over the dang place like an episode of Serengeti: Cheetah Vice Squad.

once a Cheetah has located its intended victim, it uses its incredible speed to turbo boost close enough to Blue Shell the hapless antelope’s legs right out from under it, sending it tumbling and causing a tragic antelope-pileup on the Serengeti and probably ending up on the antelope evening news. and then just to add insult to injury, the Cheetah bites its neck open and eats it.

I’ve said it before, but nature is so mean. SO MEAN.

Cheetahs are the only big cat to have this particular hunting style, and it’s because there’s no other cats quite like them. they’re not even technically “big cats”, but something so weird that they have an entire genus, Acinonyx, completely to themselves. and they’re so weird because mother nature minimaxed them for Speed and dumped every other stat to do it.

Cheetahs are long, lanky, flexible, and very lightly built. this gives them the power to accelerate like a Ferrari on bath salts, but it also makes them really bad at basically anything else large cats are usually known for. Cheetahs also can’t roar, and instead they make noises usually associated with your garden-variety tabby cat. they chirp, meow, hiss, mew, and even purr! (I don’t know about you, but I’ll take a purr over a roar any day.)

literally everything about this cat is intended to fling it forward at the highest rate of giddyup possible, and I can respect that.

but this hyperspecialized body plan comes with a price: Cheetahs are relatively weak and incredibly fragile. in fact, they’re completely outmatched by just about every other predator in Africa! they get bullied, bodied, and have their kills stolen and cubs infanticided on a pretty regular basis. this is very sad and awful, and it’s why every Cheetah in existence is an anxious mess.

no seriously, Cheetahs are notoriously anxious animals, even in captivity! this is rough for the Cheetah and can be a huge problem for animals in zoos and breeding programs. but luckily there’s a solution to soothe these unlucky anxious kitties- support dogs!

enough talk about infanticide, time for PUPPIES!

some zoos have begun raising puppies and Cheetah kittens together, giving the Cheetahs a sibling with a more laissez faire outlook on life to look up to. and the weirdest part is- it’s working! Cheetahs in breeding programs that are given dog siblings are even beginning to have the cubs they were too nervous to have before, and it’s all thanks to the positive life outlook of man’s best friend!

and that’s important, because Cheetahs are currently listed as Vulnerable. their population and range is shrinking, and these captive breeding programs are vital to keeping their numbers healthy. international efforts are underway to protect the Cheetahs and their habitat, and there’s hope that these fragile nervous speedsters will continue to blitz their way into the future.

with dog, all things are possible.

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thanks for reading! you can find the rest of the Weird Biology series on my tumblr here, or check out the official archive at weirdbiology.com!

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IMAGE SOURCES

img1- Parade img2- Ranger Rick img3- The Daily Mail/Caters News Agency img4- Sciencing img5- National Geographic img6- National Zoo img7- BoredPanda img8- Attractions Magazine

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linruuu

5 years ago

“Half thinking, half dreaming, happier than words can express.”

— Emily Brontë, from The Collected Works & Poetry; “Wuthering Heights,” (via featherumbrellas)