Cheetahs' Speed Breaks Records but its Agility Wins Hunts [VIDEO]

Cheetahs are known for their unrivaled speed, but when it comes to catching prey, being quick is not the cats' only notable quality of athleticism. The first study to collect data on the cheetah's movements in the wild reveals that lightning-quick agility and acceleration four times faster than Usain Bolt are also boons to the cheetah.

"Cheetahs don't actually go very fast when they're hunting," Alan M. Wilson, a professor at the Royal Veterinary College at the University of London told The New York Times regarding his findings.

"The hunt is much more about maneuvering, about acceleration, about ducking and diving to capture the prey."

Wilson and his team spent a decade designing and building a system that employs a solar-powered tracking collar with an internal GPS system and accelerometer that allowed them to collect data on cheetah movement in the wild.

Prior research on cheetah speed had been done with captive cheetahs, where by getting the cats to run in a relatively straight line, researchers could clock their speed. But until now, accurate data on cheetah movement in the wild was hard to come by.

Wilson and his team used darts to sedate five cheetahs and fit them with the tracking collars.

Over 17 months of collecting data in the Okavango Delta region of northern Botswana, researchers learned that while the cats can run at speeds of up to 58 miles per hour, most of their total distance covered in a day was spent running at much lower speeds. The cats' average daily speed was 33 mph.

When on the hunt, the data showed the cats making sharp turns and sudden stops. Cheetahs are able to slow down by as much as 9 mph in a single stride, up to three times as rapidly as the best polo horses - animals that were bred to be agile, according to Nature. The cats can accelerate with the power of 120 watts per kilogram, which Nature reported is about double the speed of greyhounds and more than four times as fast as Usian Bolt's record-breaking 100-meter dash in 2009.

"The cheetah is way out there ahead of those animals," Wilson told the Times, "It's really the all-around athlete, the all-around pursuit predator."

Evolutionary biologist David Carrier at the University of Utah called the cheetah a "remarkable" animal.

"Both agility and maneuverability turn out to be at least as important to these animals as speed," he told Nature, adding that he'd be interested in tracking the movements of lions or a pack of wild dogs with the collars as well.

The study "Locomotion dynamics of hunting in wild cheetahs" is published in the journal Nature.