How are cheetahs so fast?

Moment of Um

American Public Media

Kids & Family, Education For Kids

4.4 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 18 March 2025

⏱️ 5 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Have you ever raced a cheetah? Hopefully not, that sounds dangerous. But if you have, that cheetah probably left you in her dust. We asked Rick Schwartz from the San Diego Zoo to help us figure out why cheetahs are so fast.

Got a question that’s testing you? Send it to us at BrainsOn.org/contact, and we’ll help you find an answer so you don’t have to be a cheetah!

Transcript

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0:00.0	From the brains behind brains on, this is the moment of um.
0:05.1	Um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, moment of um comes to you from APM studios. I'm Anna Weggle.
0:12.5	Um.
0:16.4	Why am I running?
0:18.4	Mark Sanchez is normally the one that likes to go on runs.
0:22.4	I guess it's good for me.
0:25.4	Whatever.
0:28.3	Whoa!
0:29.8	Did you see that?
0:31.2	That girl is really fast.
0:33.0	How did you get to be that fast?
0:34.7	She's like a gazelle.
0:37.2	No, a greyhound. No, a cheetah. I think that's a really
0:41.6	fast animal, right? A cheetah? I wonder how they got to be that fast anyway. Hi, I'm Caleb. I live in
0:50.2	Sacramento. Why are cheetahs so fast?
0:55.0	My name is Rick Schwartz.
0:56.0	I'm the ambassador for San Diego Zoo Global that oversees the San Diego Zoo, the San Diego
1:00.0	Zoo, the San Diego Zoo Safari Park, and our conservation that we have around the world.
1:06.0	When it comes to the anatomy of a cheetah, everything about them is really built for speed. We can talk about the
1:12.9	physiology or the structure of the spine, the legs, and the muscles that propel the cat forward so
1:18.1	quickly. The spine is incredibly flexible. We kind of tell people to think of it as a giant spring,
1:23.5	and every time you bend a spring, no matter what direction it wants to bounce back. And with that
	...

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