Zoom!

It's neat to see the four paws hitting the ground asynchronously; I had always seen it as a one-two stride rather than a one-two-three-four stride.

Yay, big cats.

Exactly occhi, that's what I thought.

really, really cool. what's interesting to note for me is that the cheetah uses a rotary gait rather than a lateral gait, by which I mean the "lead" leg of the fore and hind pair are opposite (rotary), rather than on the same side (lateral) like a horse's gallop. As cheetahs are sprinters, not distance runners, I'd assume that is an evolved preference for balance and agility in changing directions as you can see him/her swap "leads" multiple times whilst tracking the lure. From what I understand the endurance runners of the animal kingdom (like horses) tend to prefer a lateral gait which allows them to "change leads" from one side to another to achieve "active rest" of the muscles on that side. You can see this in horse races when tiring runners often will switch leads several times in a stretch drive, and in show jumping/eventing we use this to our advantage by asking the horse to change leads through corners to gain power, balance and leverage going over the next jump.

one of the things I learned about animal physiology from studying race horses and dog breeds and soforth was that you gain greater speed advantage the more length of "wrap" (believe an engineer might call it "spring rate") you get from the spine, by which I mean how far the animal can reach underneath itself with it's hind legs. So a dachshund, for example, doesn't have a very great advantage in "wrap" because they have a long, relatively inflexible spine and can't reach their hind legs very far forward - which they don't need as they were bred specifically as burrowers for going down tunnels after varmints, so their build is an advantage in that case. Contrast that with a greyhound, even a mini (for sake of size parity, let's say) which is selectively bred for great speed over short distances (for catching fast varmints on the run) and you see a massive increase of leverage / reach and speed advantage in the long, flexible, coil-like spine that allows the greyhound to reach nearly to its shoulder with its hind leg, and of course a greater forward reach angle (long low sloping shoulders) too.

This is of course taken to an evolutionary extreme with the cheetah as you see how incredibly long their stride and reach is - and those powerful long hind legs and flexible spine that can reach way up to almost under the cat's neck to allow them to hurl themselves forward.

/animal pedantry

I found a Gizmodo link in English, in case that matters (fair warning - it IS Gizmodo) :)

http://gizmodo.com/5963508/watching-a-cheetah-run-in-slow-motion-is-still-pretty-damn-fast

Heh, interesting lfr. I did notice how ridiculously far the hind legs reached up to the shoulders. But not alternating of the leading side.