Perseverance and pivots reminded me of this article:
Key passage: "Most of the time, the cheetahs didn’t run as fast as they could. Across their hunts, their average top speed was just 33 mph (15 metres per second) and they only hit that for one or two seconds. That’s because speed isn’t the critical factor in a hunt—when the cheetahs killed their prey, they weren’t running any faster than when they flubbed their hunts.
It’s manoeuvrability that matters. To hunt agile prey like impala, cheetahs have to dodge and weave, which becomes much harder at full pelt. Just think about how much harder it is to turn a car at 60 mph than at 20 mph. “If you want to catch something, you don’t want to go faster than you have to,” says Wilson. “Manoeuvring becomes harder if you go quickly.” So, perhaps counter-intuitively, the ability to slow down sharply before a turn is incredibly important.
Cheetahs accomplish this with leg and back muscles that make up half its body weight. These contract at such high speeds that each kilogram of muscle generates 100 watts of power. For comparison, greyhounds produce just 60 watts with the same amount of muscle, horses manage just 30 watts, and
Usain Bolt can produce just 25. With these powerful muscles, a cheetah can speed up or slow down by up to 9 mph in a single stride. The cat is like a sports car that always runs on second gear.
The importance of turning also helps to explain some bizarre aspects of the cheetah’s anatomy. People often assume that its limbs should be light and slender so they can move quickly through the air. “However, cheetah limbs are actually quite massive for the animal’s body weight,” says Bertram. “[Wilson’s study] indicates that the extreme forces borne by the skeleton, in manoeuvres such as braking, require a reinforced skeleton.”
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