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See what happens when you strap a GoPro to a cheetah

A cheetah carries a camera on its back and gives humans a big cat's-eye-view of what it looks like to be a furry running machine.

Amanda Kooser
Freelance writer Amanda C. Kooser covers gadgets and tech news with a twist for CNET. When not wallowing in weird gear and iPad apps for cats, she can be found tinkering with her 1956 DeSoto.
Amanda Kooser

A cheetah can run as fast as a car on a freeway, way faster than any two-legged person. We can only dream about what it feels like to be that fleet of foot. The Cincinnati Zoo wanted to help Internet viewers get more in touch with the speedy big cats, so it strapped a GoPro to the back of Savanna, one of the zoo's cat ambassadors.

Savanna was hand-raised and is totally cool with wearing the camera harness. The ride-along is pretty thrilling. The landscape moves by at a blur as the cat's body rolls up and down during the run. If a cheetah was a horse, the rider would probably be bucked off pretty fast.

A slow-motion view of the footage reveals how steady the cheetah's head remains during the romp. "We think this might be the first time this has been accomplished with a cheetah," the zoo notes. This may be the first cheetah to rock a GoPro, but domesticated felines have been into cameras before, including these GoPro-wearing kitties and these Instagram-updating cats.

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