The Key to the Cheetah’s Speed Cheetahs and greyhounds: Both way faster than you or I could ever hope to be. On the surface, they both appear to be built well for speed, with long limbs, enormous strides and slim bodies. Why then, are cheetahs so much faster? A study using a force sensitive race track to count the strides of sprinting animals found that cheetahs are able to actually increase the number of strides per second they take the faster they are going. They’re like F1 cars, they don’t really get in tune until they are at top speed. That’s how wild cheetahs are able to run at a blistering 29 m/s as opposed to the greyhound’s paltry 18-19 m/s. On a side note, the image above is from an ill-fated experiment in 1937, at the height of dog racing popularity in London: The Romford cheetah races. (via ScienceNOW)
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The Key to the Cheetah’s Speed

Cheetahs and greyhounds: Both way faster than you or I could ever hope to be. On the surface, they both appear to be built well for speed, with long limbs, enormous strides and slim bodies. Why then, are cheetahs so much faster?

A study using a force sensitive race track to count the strides of sprinting animals found that cheetahs are able to actually increase the number of strides per second they take the faster they are going. They’re like F1 cars, they don’t really get in tune until they are at top speed.

That’s how wild cheetahs are able to run at a blistering 29 m/s as opposed to the greyhound’s paltry 18-19 m/s.

On a side note, the image above is from an ill-fated experiment in 1937, at the height of dog racing popularity in London: The Romford cheetah races.

(via ScienceNOW)

Source: news.sciencemag.org

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  1. electrontransfer reblogged this from jtotheizzoe
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    new thing, Imma start breeding them and then just collect my money.
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  12. missfluffernutter reblogged this from scishow and added:
    I remember reading about cheetah and greyhound racing in one of my favourite books as a child (Nasty Nature: Horrible...
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  18. scishow reblogged this from jtotheizzoe and added:
    Noooo! No cheetah/greyhound racing! But
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  23. argylsocks reblogged this from namosays and added:
    the image above is from an ill-fated experiment …You don’t say? Oh, wait. Let me French it up: Vous m’étonnez!

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