Comments on: Fantastic slow motion video of sprinting cheetahs

By: Marcy Mendelson

Marcy Mendelson — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 00:52:00 +0000

I think the movie Duma is based on that book.

By: Marcy Mendelson

Marcy Mendelson — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 00:50:00 +0000

Thanks … I’m doing a series on cheetah conservation for Nat Geo News Watch… check out more vids and articles here: http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/tag/marcy-mendelson/

By: Kimmo

Kimmo — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 06:03:00 +0000

Who throws away their old phones instead of selling them or giving them away to friends or relatives?

By: Jim Saul

Jim Saul — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 00:23:00 +0000

Yeah, I know that expression very well… it’s exactly the one worn by Sister Andre, my 8th grade homeroom teacher.

By: endrest

endrest — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 19:28:00 +0000

That was one of the most beautiful videos of ‘nature’ that I’ve seen. Maybe I’m just getting more sentimental as I age. But when I see something so beautiful that’s so endangered, I have to ask, “What are we doing to this planet and why don’t more people care??” I can say, for certain, that I’ll be using my iPhone4 for another couple years. I don’t want it to end up in a dump in Africa or China.

By: Guysmiley

Guysmiley — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 19:09:00 +0000

Nature’s image stabilization.

By: nvlady

nvlady — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 17:09:00 +0000

Epic.
The upper body does not move, the legs and feet contract at the same time but land staggered for positioning and extra momentum in that single stride, the tail auto corrects for weight and direction change. Perfect evolution of speed.

By: PatrickO

PatrickO — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 15:24:00 +0000

They also do a cheetah run at the San Diego Safari Park (formerly Wild Animal Park)

By: Quiche de Resistance

Quiche de Resistance — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 12:54:00 +0000

Neat to see super slow mo of greyhounds vs the cheetah. Same gait of front feet down, then back feet, with right/left foot striking the ground slightly before left/right foot.

Most interesting to me is the way the cheetah’s head stays totally focused on the prey with total concentration stare and minimal head bobbing, while the dog’s long super-powerful neck seems to pump along with the gait aiding speed and acceleration.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtMWmxdaMa0

By: Ray Perkins

Ray Perkins — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 12:46:00 +0000

Not sure where he got the idea of “videotape” from, either. Anyone can see it was filmed in Super 8!

By: Lis Riba

Lis Riba — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 12:20:00 +0000

Big Cat Rescue made a video of lions, tigers, and leopards vs. laser pointers @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3BHSt42L0Y

By: AlexG55

AlexG55 — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 09:32:00 +0000

The Pharaohs kept tame (not domesticated) cheetahs for hunting- they passed the practice on to the Kings of Persia, who passed it on to the Mughal Emperors. Hunting with cheetahs must have been more like falconry than hunting with dogs…

And here’s a National Geographic film from 1939 of people hunting with tame cheetahs:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NevenDIp95A

By: Antinous / Moderator

Antinous / Moderator — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 07:49:00 +0000

This is a more typical photo of one giving the fish-eye.

By: tyger11

tyger11 — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 07:39:00 +0000

Cheetah to Human: “You lag IRL.”

By: dioptase

dioptase — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 07:35:00 +0000

If you get a chance, make sure to see the cheetahs at the Cincinnati Zoo. They do a run a couple times a day with the cheetahs chasing a lure on a special course in front of the crowd. As the woman in charge explains, this is the only place on Earth for the public to reliably see cheetahs at full speed. Decades of studying them in Africa and she’s only seen a chase twice there. But you can see it at the zoo 4 times a day.

They also deserve props for rhino breeding, the insect zoo, and the 1.56 MW solar array shading the parking lot.

By: dioptase

dioptase — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 07:19:00 +0000

One reason they are hard to breed is they are very in bred. Very little genetic diversity means that the species is stuck with low fertility for basically forever.

By: dioptase

dioptase — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 07:16:00 +0000

Yes. And they win my vote for the angriest looking animal on the planet. Usually when we see them at the zoo, we get the feeling they don’t just want us to die, but to die slowly and painfully. Other times they seem to be in a better mood and try to kill us quickly by attacking through the glass as you walk past the exhibit.

By: Stephan J. Müller

Stephan J. Müller — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 06:27:00 +0000

I guess their brains are optimised for those fast speeds and they experience time slower. So what we are seing might just be a little bit closer to what a cheetah actually experiences while running. Fascinating. And beautiful.

By: MachineElf

MachineElf — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 06:26:00 +0000

Agreed – the ‘Behind the Scenes’ appears to say that it’s a motor/winch, and the footage of the location appears to not allow room for a jeep anyhow. So not sure where Mark got the jeep idea from.

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2012/11/cheetahs/behind-the-scenes-video

By: pt68

pt68 — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 05:42:00 +0000

so beautiful.

By: Jim Saul

Jim Saul — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 04:40:00 +0000

Man alive that’s gorgeous. I was way off on my assumption about cat’s eyes.

The more I look at photos of those the more I think I did see it. I had thought I was looking at small snow leopards in an extremely rocky habitat display.

By: j9c

j9c — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 04:02:00 +0000

If you haven’t read it already (even if you are a grownup and not a kid), I highly recommend this strong wild true book about an amazing cheetah and his boy:

http://books.google.com/books/about/How_it_Was_With_Dooms.html?id=VM5PbGBagc8C

How It Was with Dooms: A True Story from Africa

Maybe it’s out of print. Check half.com if you can’t locate it at your local used bookstore.

Every parent and every kid should have at least one story for bedtime involving a cheetah, a real cheetah, who does amazing things like not eat the family’s toddler children, or finds a big cobra and kills it, or barges into the neighbor’s house and eats their dinner party food.

By: lavardera

lavardera — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 03:23:00 +0000

I don’t think they are pulling that behind a jeep. Looks like they are doing it like coursing – that’s a competition done with sight hounds where they chase a lure pulled by a cable as it is wound up by a motor driven reel.

Anyway, those mf’s are fast, right?

By: Antinous / Moderator

Antinous / Moderator — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 03:19:00 +0000

Have you met the Pallas Cat?

By: Jim Saul

Jim Saul — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 03:10:00 +0000

Seeing it cut and swerve like that is amazing Great stills as well.

By: technogeekagain

technogeekagain — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 03:10:00 +0000

Note just how efficient that stride is. Very little energy is wasted in letting the body move up and down; all the work goes directly into forward momentum.

Lovely.

Cheetahs have been nearly impossible to breed in captivity — they need a good long run to kick the anatomy into gear. Rumor has it that biologists are finally starting to understand the hormone chain involved in that, so I’m hopeful that we’ll at least be able to maintain a zoo population, inferior as that would be to having them in the wild.

(Cheetahs are also reportedly the one Big Cat which can be reliably domesticated. So if the breeding problem is ever beaten, we may wind up with house-cheetahs that you don’t have to be a Roaring 20′s millionaire to afford. I’m completely undecided whether that would be a good thing or not.)

By: Ed Hagopian

Ed Hagopian — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 03:08:00 +0000

Head. Doesn’t. Move.

By: Jim Saul

Jim Saul — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 03:03:00 +0000

A wider angle shot. They’ve got a baby giraffe at the moment, too. It looks unreal it’s such a perfect little miniature of the adults.

By: Jim Saul

Jim Saul — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 02:55:00 +0000

There’s a baby cheetah at the Cincinnati Zoo at the moment, too. I don’t know if the mother was the one in the video or not, but the baby’s pretty adorable.

When I loaded the photos on a good screen I was surprised to notice that the cheetah seems to have round pupils. Make’s sense since they hunt in daylight, but I just always assumed they were slits like housecat eyes.

By: xzzy

xzzy — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 02:47:00 +0000

I like how you can see the cat alter its stride just as it nears the toy, trying to pounce on it.

Then the ball zips away and the cheetah is all “what the fuck is this shit, that shouldn’t be faster than me.”