The Cheetah Fastest Land Animal in the World

The sun has risen over the African plains.

Overhead, a pair of chatty monkeys are on the lookout. They can't see anything yet, but that doesn't change the urgency that seems to pervade the very air itself. A peaceful herd of gazelles is grazing nearby, only occasionally looking up from their morning meal. The air is still. It is the calm before the fury.

Something else is watching.

Its eyes are motionless and focused on something in the distance: focused with a mechanism that no other eyes posess. Air fills oversized lungs and a precision, highly optimized cardiovascular system slowly begins to pick up the energy demand as now, the hunter, an animal so perfected for one task that its very presence seems to stand in defiance of everything that is known or has ever been known about the natural world, takes its first slow steps.

A breeze gusts past and takes almost no notice of the slowly pacing cat. Its body is so aerodynamically shaped that it is as invisible to the wind as dolphins are to the sea. Claws, unique in the world of the big cats since they never retract, begin to put more and more pressure on the ground as the graceful form gradually picks up velocity. Sight and scent lock. Distance and direction are determined. A first deep breath is taken and massive amounts of energy are redirected to the most awe-inspiring natural propulsion mechanism on the planet.

Even the wind, keeper of timeless knowledge and in posession of all the immense power of weather and the sky can only offer symbolic resistance, for the creature that is now on the move has no rivals. The wind can neither catch it nor stop it. It is the world's absolute undisputed champion of its craft.

Speed.

The cheetah is still carefully watching for a reaction. The gazelles might still be a half-mile away, and well they should be, because this animal conquers distance effortlessly. Its eyes remain locked, as distance or direction could change in an instant. So profound are the cheetah's reactions that a single reflexive swerve can cover a hundred yards in intervals of time so precise that the difference between success and failure can be measured in millimeters of distance and grams of mass.

The first distant hints of alarm begin to affect the herd. It is not just the gazelles that look up, but the zebras and the giraffes as well. Like the other creatures of the African plains, they are fully aware of what is approaching. Each of them knows all they are capable of is a panicked stumble in a random direction. They know the futility of their gesture, but today, for now, they survive.

A sudden burst of blurred motion marks the start of the chase. The cheetah reaches a pursuit speed of fifty miles per hour in under three seconds, and its formidable cooling mechanisms engage. Massive amounts of heat are continuously expelled and incoming air is cooled through the animal's unique respiratory system. The amount of heat being drained from the big cat's bloodstream is so enormous that it might upset a lesser creature's metabolism, but for the cheetah's supercharged musculature, bursts of thermal exchange like these are its metabolism.

As it breaks range, the herd of gazelles almost literally explodes in all directions, and precisely two seconds later, the dust cloud marking their flight is incinerated by a lightly colored, spotted shockwave of ferocious energy.

In under four seconds, the cheetah reaches sixty miles per hour.

Despite the agile gyrations of its feet and tail, the cheetah's sight remains locked, its head moving only slightly as it runs. Faster. Within each instant, direction changes. Range begins to close. 40 yards. Faster. 30 yards. Faster. The gazelle is strong and its sprint is sure, but its strategy has a fatal flaw. Competing with a cheetah strength for strength puts this chase, like millions before it, on a familiar path. One desperate swerve and the gazelle seems to bend physics as the chase once again changes course. With a lesser pursuer, this might have gained it the slightest of advantages: an edge: the currency with which it might ransom its own survival. But not this day. Fifteen yards, and the cheetah continues to accelerate.

Sixty-five miles per hour.

The colors of the savannah begin to blur and time itself slowly inhales as if preparing to voice a protest against the awe-inspiring display of raw, impossible power under the piercing light of the fiery African sun. The chase breaks into the open and the gazelle throws every last molecule of adrenalin into one final, massive burst of speed. Five yards away, the cheetah's coat slowly begins to heat from air friction as its unique spinal column continues applying increasing power to balance its acceleration as it streches towards maximum velocity: each stride covering nearly seven yards.

Seventy miles per hour.

A claw swipes through the scorching air like lightning. For the quick, it is the instant of survival. For others, it is the instant they become part of a tribute to a champion.

There is a moment at the end of every chase when, out of the cloud of dust that commemorates the hunter's victory, there is the briefest flicker of shadow: a quicksilver afterimage, or perhaps it is something that cannot be explained. It is only visible for a trice, and then it is gone, with a speed like that of the creature which is its only kindred. It transcends every measure of time and motion as it takes flight and vanishes into the sun. The many denizens of the plains know not when they might see it again.

Far in the distance, eyes watch and a breath is taken by the one creature who each second perceives that which others can only glimpse: seen by few, vanishing in an instant. Deep within, only the cheetah knows exactly when and where it shall again appear.

For they run as one.