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201315Jun10:54

Wild chee­tah often accel­er­ates sev­eral times dur­ing hunt, RVC research shows

Infor­ma­tion
pub­lished 15 June 2013 | mod­i­fied 30 May 2014
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Cheetah withcollarResearchers at the Royal Vet­eri­nary Col­lege (RVC) have cap­tured the first detailed infor­ma­tion on the hunt­ing dynam­ics of the wild chee­tah in its nat­ural habi­tat. Using an inno­v­a­tive GPS and motion sens­ing col­lar that they designed, Pro­fes­sor Alan Wil­son and his team were able to record remark­able speeds of up to 93 km/​h.

The results, from the team at the RVC’s Struc­ture & Motion Lab­o­ra­tory, are pub­lished on 13 June in Nature and are also fea­tured on the journal’s cover.

To date, mea­sure­ments of chee­tah loco­mo­tion mechan­ics have only been made on cap­tive ani­mals chas­ing a lure in a straight line, with few stud­ies elic­it­ing speeds faster than rac­ing grey­hounds. For wild chee­tahs, esti­mates of speed have only ever been made from direct obser­va­tion or film, in open habi­tat and dur­ing day­light hours.

Chee­tah chas­ing a lure in San Diego Zoo Safari Park:

Pro­fes­sor Wil­son, research team leader and lead author, RVC, Uni­ver­sity of London:

Although the chee­tah is recog­nised as the fastest land ani­mal, very lit­tle is known about other aspects of its notable ath­leti­cism, par­tic­u­larly when hunt­ing in the wild. Our tech­nol­ogy allowed us to cap­ture what to our knowl­edge is the first detailed loco­mo­tor infor­ma­tion on the hunt­ing dynam­ics of a large cur­so­r­ial preda­tor in its nat­ural habi­tat and as a result we were able to record some of the high­est mea­sured val­ues for lat­eral and for­ward accel­er­a­tion, decel­er­a­tion and body mass.

The team devel­oped a track­ing col­lare­quipped with a GPS mod­ule and elec­tronic motion sen­sors (accelerom­e­ters, mag­ne­tome­ters, gyro­scopes) capa­ble of deliv­er­ing processed posi­tion and veloc­ity data and sen­si­tive to the animal’s move­ments. The col­lar was pow­ered by a com­bi­na­tion of solar cells, recharge­able and non-​rechargeable bat­ter­ies. More about test­ing the col­lar here.

Col­lar soft­ware mon­i­tored the accelerom­e­ters to cre­ate activ­ity sum­maries and detect the brief hunt­ing events and adapted col­lar oper­a­tion to bat­tery volt­ages and time of day, mean­ing that researchers only cap­tured data dur­ing a hunt. Over­all, researchers recorded data from 367 runs by three female and two male adult chee­tahs over 17 months. An episode of feed­ing after a run indi­cated hunt­ing suc­cess, and was iden­ti­fied in the activ­ity data by con­sis­tent, low-​magnitude acceleration.

Data revealed that wild chee­tah runs started with a period of accel­er­a­tion, either from sta­tion­ary or slow move­ment (pre­sum­ably stalk­ing) up to high speed. The chee­tahs then decel­er­ated and manoeu­vred before prey cap­ture. About one-​third of runs involved more than one period of sus­tained accel­er­a­tion. In suc­cess­ful hunts, there was often a burst of accelerom­e­ter data after the speed returned to zero, inter­preted as the chee­tah sub­du­ing the prey — in this case mainly Impala, which made up 75% of their diet.


The aver­age run dis­tance was 173 metre (m). The longest runs recorded by each chee­tah ranged from 407 to 559 m and the mean run fre­quency was 1.3 times per day, so, even if some hunts were missed, high speed loco­mo­tion only accounted for a small frac­tion of the 6,040-m aver­age daily total dis­tance cov­ered by the cheetahs.

An ultra slo-​mo video of a chee­tah run­ning:

This video shows the grace and force of a chee­tah run­ning at full speed. Watch the length of the cheetah’s stride (up to 8 metre).

The team was also able to iden­tify fac­tors that make up a suc­cess­ful hunt. Suc­cess­ful hunts involved greater decel­er­a­tion on aver­age, but there was no sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence in peak accel­er­a­tion, dis­tance trav­elled, num­ber of turns, or total turn angle. This indi­cates that out­come was deter­mined in the final stages of a hunt rather than hunts being aban­doned early to save energy or reduce risk of injury, and the higher decel­er­a­tion val­ues may reflect actual prey capture.

The great­est accel­er­a­tion and decel­er­a­tion val­ues were almost dou­ble val­ues pub­lished for polo horses and exceeded the accel­er­a­tions reported for grey­hounds at the start of a race. The accel­er­a­tion power for the chee­tahs was four times higher than that achieved by Usain Bolt dur­ing his world record 100 metres run, about dou­ble that for rac­ing grey­hounds and more than three times higher than polo horses in competition.

Grip and manoeu­vra­bil­ity, rather than top speed, were shown to be key to hunt­ing suc­cess. Hunts involved con­sid­er­able manoeu­vring, with max­i­mum lat­eral (cen­tripetal) accel­er­a­tions often exceed­ing 13ms-​2 at speeds less than 17ms-​1 (polo horses achieve 6ms-​2).

Pro­fes­sor Alan Wil­son, said: “In the future, equiv­a­lent data for other wild cur­so­r­ial species would enhance what we know about nat­ural speed, agility and endurance, and pro­vide detailed infor­ma­tion on rang­ing behav­iour in the wild. For exam­ple, infor­ma­tion on habi­tat selec­tion by endan­gered species detail­ing where ani­mals are com­mut­ing, hunt­ing and rest­ing would be infor­ma­tive when attempt­ing to eval­u­ate wildlife-​protected areas.”

The chee­tahs used in this study were part of a con­tin­u­ing study by Botswana Preda­tor Con­ser­va­tion Trust in the Oka­vango Delta region of North­ern Botswana.

(Source: RVC press release, 13.06.2013; Vimeo|Gre­gory Wilson’s videos)

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