A few months ago, The Cincinnati Zoo challenged
Cheetah Outreach to a little race. At stake?
The future of a species...and bragging rights as the world's fastest mammal.
Sarah, an eight-year-old cheetah from Cincinnati, made the first runs in this race.
She set a record of 6.13 second over 100 meters. This shaved about 1/20 of a second off the old record (6.19 seconds). By way of comparison,
Usain Bolt covers this distance in a leisurely 9.58 seconds.
South Africa's Cheetah Outreach's competitor,
Zaza, will make her runs later this month or early next.
posted by MrGuilt
on Sep 9, 2009 -
24 comments
Polar bears of Churchill, Manitoba. Wildlife photographer Ken Bereskin has a nice collection of polar bears
frolicking in the snow.
This itchy bear
is so frustrated, he's using the rippled ice of a frozen lake to
scratch himself. If you need a change of temperature, he also has
over 500 images
of wildlife from Uganda and Kenya, including
big
cats (a mother
cuddling
with
her cubs, a cheetah
chomping
down on a gazelle, and a young lioness
shredding
a skeleton to pieces),
great
apes, and
other wildlife (
the
lowly hyena eating the cheetah's leftovers, a black-headed heron
eating
a venomous boomslang snake, and a
scary-looking
vulture taking it all in from above). He also has a
smaller
collection of desert wildlife from the dunes of Etoshia National
Park in Namibia. (His real job is working for Apple, and he has a
Panther blog
that hasn't been updated in eons, but evidently that's not as much fun
as chasing after hungry carnivorous animals in the sweltering heat, or
risking frostbite in the snow).
posted by invisible ink
on May 6, 2004 -
5 comments
But what about the kitties? Feline Immunodeficiency Virus. FIV has been recognized as a syndrome since 1986, and as with AIDS, has been found in stored blood samples dating back to the 60s. Unlike HIV, however, for FIV there's a
vaccine. Not that
everyone is excited about it.
Originally, this was to be a post intended to provide something lighter until
this appeared:
In addition, over 25 large cat species including, cheetahs, lions, and panthers have their own strain of the virus. Despite similarity among these viruses, transmission among species has never been documented. Scientists think that FIV is an old virus and may be the grandfather of all immunodeficiency viruses. Comparison of its' genetic code point to a virus that is millions of years old. Googling led to several topics.
posted by y2karl
on Dec 1, 2002 -
3 comments
