Wound Up Like A Spring

As amazing as Usain Bolt is, we humans aren't really designed to run very fast. We gave that up when we grew large brains, pushing our pelvises further apart and ruining the geometric setup our taller and faster cousins Homo erectus enjoyed.

Typically we use the the 100 meter and 200 meter dash to measure speed and Usain does the 100 in 9.58 seconds, which is insanely fast for a human. But he would get smoked by a Cheetah, apparently. A cat named Sarah (see pic) at the Cincinnati Zoo has just been clocked running the 100 meter in a cool 6.13.

Watching the YouTube video of Sarah doing this run, chasing a fake stuffed dog that the handlers couldn't even keep in front of her, I get the feeling she's capable of a significantly better time still. It looks like she's loping part of the way.

That's fast. If you are an MPH-calibrated person, Cheetahs can break 70 MPH in the field.

Cheetahs have survived for millions of years under tremendous environmental pressure to be fast. Their primary source of food is an animal called the Thompson's Gazelle, itself one of the fastest land animals on Earth. So if a given Cheetah is going to survive, he or she had better be very fast indeed. As a result, Cheetahs have evolved tremendous short-distance speed.

Of course, in nature selection works both ways, so the faster the Cheetah gets, the faster the Thompson's Gazelle gets. In this case these two animals are locked in a very specific and deadly game of one-upmanship that has granted both of them blazing speed and agility.

You can't really appreciate how fast a Cheetah is until you actually see one in person. I was lucky enough to see one sprint at the Cleveland Zoo and I can tell you it was breathtaking. They are built like big springs, each leap moving them more than 20 feet forward. They hardly seem to touch the ground.

I wonder what I would do in the 100 meter. I'd be much too embarrassed to actually try, with or without a stuffed dog to chase.