Live At The Cleveland Zoo-Cheetahs

We move from the slowest living mammal yesterday (and the even slower reptile the day before) to the fastest land mammal today. This would be the cheetahs. Absolutely beautiful big cats, long, lean, nothing but muscle, fur and teeth. If one of these fellows sets out after you, you'd better be driving a Jaguar or something faster. If you're on foot, they're going to catch you and they're going to eat you. These beauties live at the Cleveland MetroParks Zoo, where they had three of them in a single habitat. I don't know what the relationship between the three of them was, but they seemed to be getting along well enough.



Just so you know, this may look like a detail of that first picture up there, but it's a different picture, taken a few seconds earlier. This particular cheetah was focused on something for a few seconds and I was able to get off a few shots of what were pretty much identical poses. I love how the animal was moving just enough, and I was tracking her well enough, that the background is a little blurred, but the animal's face is still in focus. Beautiful!