You know that treadmill that’s gathering dust in the spare room? The one that’s draped in shirts and is used as a clothes drier? Don’t do this with it.
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In 1976, researchers put a lion on a treadmill. Lions are the second largest big cat (after the tiger). Adult males weigh up to 225 kilograms, females up to 130 kilograms. They are apex predators, famed for their brute strength.
Adults can eat up to 40 kilograms of meat in a single meal, which is equivalent to a quarter of their body weight, an eighth of a zebra or 350 quarter pounders. It takes an audacious researcher to wrangle one onto a moving platform, but in the name of science, that’s exactly what happened.
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Pamela Sue Chassin from Harvard University and colleagues trained not one, but two young male lions to run on a treadmill. Their goal was not to see how fast the animals could run, but to see how their bodies used oxygen. As the lions broke into a sprint, their oxygen consumption increased at more than three times the rate that was predicted for four-legged mammals. In other words, they chugged down a lot of oxygen, and then quickly fatigued.
This makes sense. Lions, we now realise, are adapted for short ambush sprints rather than prolonged chases. Zoom in, and this can be seen at the level of their muscle fibres. Lions contain exceptionally powerful ‘fast-twitch’ fibres, which generate significantly more force and three times more power than the human equivalent.
During these athletic outbursts, scientists estimate the felines can reach speeds of up to 70 kilometres per hour. This is almost twice as fast as the world’s speediest man, Usain Bolt, who reached a peak footspeed of 44 kilometres per hour during his iconic 100 metre race.
So, can a person outrun a lion? No. In fact, running is the worst thing you can do when there are lions around because it mimics the behaviour of the animal’s prey and triggers the urge to hunt.
Instead, experts recommend standing your ground. Make yourself look imposing by raising your arms, opening up your jacket or clapping your hands. Swallow the urge to scream, and instead, shout in the deepest, boomiest voice you can muster. If the lion hesitates or stops advancing, begin to walk back slowly while still facing the animal. And if the does lion attack, fight back vigorously and pray that someone will help you.
