High-speed galloping in the cheetah and the racing greyhound

This comparative biomechanics study placed cheetahs and racing greyhounds on a track and recorded spatio-temporal and kinetic characteristics of their galloping gait. Both are elite cursorial sprinters, yet the cheetah reaches higher top speeds, and the authors dissected why. They quantified stride length, stride frequency, duty factor, and the distribution of forces between fore- and hindlimbs, finding that the cheetah achieved greater stride length and made distinctive use of its flexible back, while sharing some features with the greyhound. The head-to-head design controlled for many variables and isolated the traits that translate into the cheetah speed advantage. It is frequently cited as a model for how to compare locomotor performance across species and for grounding claims about cheetah sprinting in measured gait mechanics rather than legend.