From 0 to 100 and 100 to 0 in less than 3 seconds. What does it take for this outstanding feat? Evolutionary engineering under the supervision of the best engineer on earth – Nature.

Slim, muscular, and lean legs to minimize air resistance, a small rounded head set on a long neck and a flexible spine to maneuver at will, a deep chest with a flattened rib cage enclosing the lungs of a Sherpa to churn in O2 to feed 150 breaths per minute.

Special thick pads on its feet for traction and a long tail that acts as a rudder to steer, stabilize and balance. Non-retractable claws, an adaptation to help maintain traction like a soccer player’s cleats. Distinctive black “tear tracks” running from the inside corner of each eye to the mouth serve as an anti-glare mechanism for daytime hunting.

With flexible hips and free-moving shoulder blades, the cheetah's skeleton is a sort of spring – storing and releasing energy at will – attaining a stride length of an incredible 25 feet per push.

A cat so incredible yet so vulnerable, fewer than 8000 roam the wild. The onus is on us – the humans – to take steps to prevent these wonders of nature from going extinct.

Here’s my tribute to the gems of the Savannah – Cheetahs

TITAN

"We patronize the animals for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours, they are more finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other Nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth." 

― Henry Beston

I C U #15

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