This will be aired at 8.00pm on Thursday 25th January on BBC One. Professor Wilson’s research will feature in the third episode of the new BBC documentary series – Big Cats. However, when the chases are slower, the prey have more options to dodge and change direction quickly, allowing them to be more unpredictable. This allows them to out-manoeuvre and capture their prey during a high-speed chase. Predators have exceptional athletic capabilities that enable them to brake, change direction and accelerate at speed. Their muscles were found to be 20% more powerful, they were 38% faster, 37% better at accelerating and 72% better at decelerating. Professor Wilson and his team found that although cheetahs and impalas were the more athletic predator-prey pair, compared to lions and zebras, both predators were similarly more athletic than their prey. The research used state of the art technology, including high-tech location-tracking and movement-sensing collars, as well as Professor Wilson’s self-built research aircraft equipped with sophisticated tracking, filming and terrain-mapping technology. They also took tiny muscle samples back to their UK laboratory to test how powerful the animals’ muscle fibres were. Wilson and his research team collected movement data from five cheetahs, nine lions, seven zebras and seven impalas. Professor Wilson’s research involved analysing the movements of wild, free-ranging cheetahs and lions and their most common prey, impalas and zebras, in the savannah of Northern Botswana. His new discoveries suggest that slower speeds and last-second turns actually give prey animals better chances of survival, whereas predators must evolve to be more athletic to follow the unpredictable prey. However, new research carried out by Professor Alan Wilson of the Royal Veterinary College (RVC) has changed our understanding of athleticism in animals. For some animals this has led to an evolutionary arms-race where speed is the main objective. In the battle between predator and prey, the victor can be decided by the smallest of margins. Superior athletic capability gives predators the edge at high speeds, but low speed maneuverability favours prey survival – says new Royal Veterinary College (RVC) research RVC research sheds light on predator/prey movement
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