Name: Why Humans Can’t Run Cheetah Speeds (70mph) and How We Could | WIRED
Uploaded: 2021-04-23T02:59:35.000Z
Duration: 11 min 49 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

- [Adrienne] Cheetahs can reach up to 70 miles an hour

but only for a very short period of time.

- The cheetah is able to run up to 70 miles an hour.

about 50% of their entire body mass is made of muscle.

- And the type of fibers that a cheetah has compared

to the type of muscle fibers that we have are much

more heavily weighted towards fast twitch fibers

- Over 80% of the musculature in the thigh

That's an enormously large proportion of that muscle type,

which is what enables them to reach amazingly fast speeds.

which is what helps extend out the hip and then pull it back

into the body very quickly and powerfully.

And that extension and flexion is what enables them

with their back legs and generate that power.

Take a look at this video of this cheetah running

and are pulled back very quickly and very powerfully.

Even the ears are pulled back against the head,

they actually have a four beaded gate, very similar

to a horse when it is galloping, but unlike other species

the cheetah has two moments in its stride

when all four feet are off the ground at the same time.

between a flat-footed walk and almost a tiptoe walk

the cheetah has some unique musculature whereby

ready to start that sprint almost on the spur of the moment

we are really only hitting or striking the ground

We have a lever from the hip to the knee.

We have another lever from the knee to the ankle.

And the last lever is from the ball of the foot to the toes.

This allows us to use the muscles of the foot

and of the lower leg from the calf downwards

to generate power when the foot is contacting the ground.

- So let's take a look at a cheetah foot.

So not much of the bottom of the cheetah foot,

acting like those track cleats when the animal sprints.

the middle two toes are the most weightbearing.

So they take the brunt of all of the cheetahs weight.

You may wonder what happened to the fifth toe.

That is actually what we know as the dewclaw.

That is what they use to trip up their prey

As they reach the back legs of their prey,

they hook those back legs with that dewclaw

and then they can jump in and finish the kill.

So you'll notice when the cheetah is sprinting

after its prey, it doesn't go in a straight line.

The prey is trying to get away from the cat.

And so it makes a zigzag motion when it's running.

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Why Humans Can’t Run Cheetah Speeds (70mph) and How We Could | WIRED

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