
Cheetahs' inner ear is one-of-a-kind, vital to high-speed hunting - fern12
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-02/amon-cie020218.php
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RolloTom
Relevant, cheetahs running filmed with an high speed camera: Cheetahs on the
Edge—Director’s Cut [https://vimeo.com/53914149](https://vimeo.com/53914149)

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wmu
Thanks for this clip, it's amazing how it keeps the head still. BTW, the
kingfisher has similar ability, check this
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIs4tpV2FUQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIs4tpV2FUQ)

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blacksmith_tb
Optical image stabilization! I am interested to see that this seems to be the
way various predators have solved the problem, I take it that unlike the
direction our camera technology is going (which is to throw more software at
the problem), it was most economical to use a lot of tiny neck muscle
adjustments (no Moore's law for predator brains, to be fair, so it might have
tied up a lot of neurons to do the same in software).

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louprado
>> the cheetah, is a successful hunter not only because it is quick, but also
because it can hold an incredibly still gaze while pursuing prey.

A bit off-topic but I have a theory on athletic ability when it comes to
certain sports related to this post. Before I share my theory, consider this 1
minute clip narrated by an apex predator.

[https://youtu.be/S9MtJ164XJI?t=1m24s](https://youtu.be/S9MtJ164XJI?t=1m24s)

When I was young there was a lot of ethic tension in my neighborhood. Being a
minority, I always felt like prey. I didn't even trust the police. I lost
every street fight and broke a few bones along the way. And I was terrible at
almost all _ball_ sports because I could not get my eyes to smoothly track the
motion of a basketball for example.

I suspect, but don't know for a fact, that they eyes of prey being chased by
said cheetah are darting chaotically looking for any and all escape routes and
to avoid additional predators.

In my 30's I spent time training in brutal martial art combat techniques. I
trained in powerlifting and 10 years ago I weighed 200lbs. I grew muscles I
didn't know existed. Now, I have lost nearly all of these gains because I no
longer train, but I managed to achieve and maintain that predator instinct.
When I play racquetball, I _murder_ that ball. I can track it perfectly.

The downside is I have safely ridden a motorcycle most of my life. I find I
have more "close calls" now that I lost my innate ability to feel like prey
which no longer comes naturally.

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totalZero
Ride safe bud. Wear good gear and be disciplined about maintenance.

For lack of a better way to phrase it...what exactly is your point?

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whatshisface
He's proposing a theroy about human behavior. His idea is that when people are
used to feeling unsafe they tend towards prey animal survival strategies (eyes
darting around, focusing on escape routes instead of goals) and that when
people get used to being on top of things they tend to adopt predator animal
behaviors (eyes on the ball, focusing on goals instead of possible escapes.)

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totalZero
The reason I wasn't sure this was what he was trying to say is that good
motorcyclists tend to keep their eyes steady on the horizon, and yet also,
they continuously identify possible escape routes.

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tyingq
Interesting article. Sounds like the cheetah has a sort of natural
implementation of camera stabilization. Their head stays still despite the
exaggerated motion of everything else during a high speed chase.

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trevyn
Don't humans have this too?

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icegreentea2
Yes. Pretty much all vertebrates have something like this. The claim here is
that cheetah's have an unusually well developed vestibular system, and that
this evolution was recent (developed after the 'concept' of a cheetah
evolved).

The linked paper is free to read. The actual research itself is limited to the
anatomical study of how cheetah's vestibular system are different from other
cats. It builds on other papers that talk about the relative advanceness of
the cheetah's head stabilization, and the estimated benefits of the
stabilization.

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dmix
Specifically from the article:

> They found that the inner ears of living cheetahs differ markedly from those
> of all other felids alive today, with a greater overall volume of the
> vestibular system and longer anterior and posterior semicircular canals.

> These traits were not present in Acinonyx pardinensis, the extinct species
> examined by the researchers, emphasizing the recent evolution of the highly
> specialized inner ear of modern cheetah.

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benwilber0
> The inner ear facilitates the cheetah's remarkable ability to maintain
> visual and postural stability while running and capturing prey at speeds of
> up to 65 miles per hour. Until now, no one has investigated the inner ear's
> role in this incredible hunting specialization.

This is crazy. How does the ear affect the ability to move? I guess Cheetahs
and cats in general just have insanely acute hearing.

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icegreentea2
The inner ear (vestibular system) helps you maintain balance. The inner ear
has a series of curved liquid filled canals that are also lined with sensitive
hairs. As your head accelerates, the liquid sloshes around and the hairs pick
up on the movement.

Being able to stablize your head during running lets you do a few thing:

* It probably makes it easier to continue tracking the prey. It probably makes it easier to see what the prey is doing (are they about to turn? are they looking somewhere? what's going on?)

* While running, if you can minimize any vertical movement, you can minimize energy consumption. Presumably even if your body/shoulders were displacing vertically while running, if you could maintain your head at a fixed vertical position with respect to the ground, you could save the energy put into moving the head against gravity. Obviously this advantage is heavily biomechanically and anatomically situational, and may not always be the case

