INFORMATION FOR CANDIDATES
JOB REF: VBS/0065/12
The Structure & Motion Laboratory
See www.rvc.ac.uk/sml. The Structure and Motion Laboratory is part of the Lifestyle
Research Programme at the Royal Veterinary College. The research group of approximately
50 includes vets, biologists, palaeontologists, engineers and computer scientists, supported
by technical and administrative staff. The research base is a modern 46m x 17m laboratory
at the College’s Hertfordshire campus housing some of the best facilities in the world for
studying the biomechanics of locomotion; much experimental research is also undertaken in
the field.
The Project: Dynamics and energetics of hunting in the cheetah
This is a three year project funded by Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research
Council (BBSRC). The aim of the project is to investigate the energetics and dynamics of
hunting in wild cheetahs to determine the factors influencing and limiting their locomotor
performance.
A cheetah can sprint at 65 mph, making it the fastest land animal by far - elite racing
greyhounds and racehorses (and zoo cheetahs chasing a lure) only manage 40 mph.
Cheetahs are also highly manoeuvrable, allowing them to catch even the most agile of prey.
But what is it about the cheetah that enables it to do this? At the moment we simply don't
know. The highly cited 'cheetah top speed' comes from just three measured runs by one
individual cheetah in 1965. To find out, we need to measure the performance of cheetah
during hunting in the wild - the only time that peak speed and manoeuvring are achieved.
However, whilst cheetahs are believed to hunt almost daily, hunting is hard to observe
directly.
We plan to fit wild cheetah with unique electronic tracking collars that we have designed and
built especially for this type of work. Each collar contains a high accuracy GPS to pinpoint
location and speed along with acceleration sensors, miniature gyroscopes, a compass and a
tiny low power computer. The sensors can detect the cheetah's exact footfall pattern - how
many strides and when each foot is on the ground. The collars monitor where the cheetah is
and what it is doing - resting, walking, and most importantly, hunting and only collects
detailed information when the cheetah is moving quickly (logging data up to 300 times per
second). From the data, we can reconstruct the exact movement of the cheetah during a
hunt. At other times, regular position updates and behaviour are recorded and the integrated
solar panels recharge the batteries. The collar data is stored for later download via an
integral radio-link.
We aim to film cheetah hunts from the ground and air using our own aircraft fitted with a high
resolution high speed video camera on a mount that automatically points at a GPS-derived
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location. Because the cameras and collars are exactly synchronised in time, we can examine
the collar data and video footage of the hunt step by step, including the terrain, obstacles and
interaction with the prey. We will use a combination of statistical analysis techniques and
computer modelling to examine limits and aids to performance like grip, muscle power
requirements, turn initiation and tail movement.
The key to explaining the cheetah's speed and agility may lie in its muscles. Therefore we
will study how quickly and powerfully cheetah muscle fibres can contract (by studying
skinned and intact muscle fibre samples taken using a fine biopsy needle) to find out whether
its properties differ from those of other cats or other elite performance animals such as
humans, racehorses or greyhounds. We have a dedicated muscle lab within the SML
equipped with low and high range versions of the Aurora 300B Dual-Mode muscle lever
system Systems (Control and Measure Length and Force) and associated equipment for
intact fibre work. Skinned fibre facilities including an Aurora 1400AE permeabilised fibre
apparatus modified for temperature-jump activations and a Leica M80 microscope for micro
dissection of single muscle fibres.
This project will be the first to record such detailed data on wild cheetahs 24 hours a day. As
well as enabling us to find out how cheetahs achieve their speed and manoeuvrability, these
data will also enable us to explore - in unprecedented detail - cheetah behaviour, home
range use and territory size, which is necessary to develop management strategies for the
cheetah's long-term survival. The muscle studies may contribute new information for
scientists working to develop new treatments for muscle problems in humans and animals.
There is a significant impact and public engagement element in this project and all staff are
expected to take part in the activities. These range from peer training to running lab events
for school science students to filming for TV.
The Project Team
Professor Alan Wilson is Principal Investigator and head of the Structure & Motion
Laboratory. His research interests include understanding the design of animals (including
humans) for high speed and economical locomotion, innovative measurement techniques for
studying animals during field locomotion and muscle-tendon interaction in locomotion. He is
currently involved in developing GPS based localisation technology for legged locomotion
and integrating physiological data with ultrawideband radio derived speed and position data
in training and horseracing. These projects all depend on a range of innovative technologies
including GPS, inertial sensors and advanced signal processing techniques to analyse field
locomotion. He is involved in the full range of project activities, travels to the study area
regularly and undertakes the darting.
Dr Jim Usherwood is a research fellow in the Structure and Motion Lab, and has a
background in zoology. He is has interests in both terrestrial and aerial animal mechanics,
and is a co-investigator on the project.
Professors Roger Woledge and Nancy Curtin. They investigate the energetics and
mechanics of muscle contractions mimicking in vivo function under physiological conditions.
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Their program has been innovative in bringing together the physiological and biomechanical
approaches to muscle function. Along with Dr Tim West (TW), our laboratory manager, who
has extensive experience studying the biophysics and biochemistry of muscle fibres, Roger
and Nancy will be responsible for measuring fibre contraction dynamics in cheetah muscle.
Dr Andy King. NERC research fellow. His research in behavioural and evolutionary ecology
examines how costs and benefits shape individual behaviour, and how these behaviours
relate to the structure and function of groups and populations.
Dr Tico McNutt is Director of the Botswana Predator Conservation Trust. He began his
pioneering work in the Okavango Delta in 1989 while completing his PhD in Animal
Behaviour from the University of California, Davis. He now has 23 years’ experience in
studying wild dogs and other carnivores. He and Krys Jordan run the field site and will
contribute to study design, data interpretation and presentation particularly where it relates to
the field ecology aspects of the work.
Co-investigators on associated EPSRC CARDyAL project
Professor Stephen Hailes, deputy head of the Department of Computer Science, University
College London (UCL), and visiting professor at the Structure & Motion Laboratory. He has
research interests in social networking, radio localisation, sensor systems and collaborated
on the development of the technology to be used in this project.
Professor John Shawe –Taylor is Head of UCL Computer Science and his interests are the
development of statistical pattern recognition methods for reducing dimensionality in data. He
has pioneered the development of the well-founded approaches to Machine Learning
inspired by statistical learning theory (including Support Vector Machine, Boosting and
Kernel Principal Components Analysis) and has shown the viability of applying these
techniques to document analysis and computer vision.
See www.rvc.ac.uk/sml for more information.
Two full time positions are funded on the project, one a biologist/biomechanist who will work
on the locomotion and biological aspects of the work and the other a research engineer who
will be involved in system development, integration and deployment and data processing and
analysis.
The Field Location
Our field work will be based with the Botswana Predator Conservation Trust, www.bpct.org in
and around the Moremi reserve in northern Botswana. The camp has very basic facilities and
job applicants should be aware that this location really is wild Africa. The scientists at the
camp are hugely experienced and very familiar with the local cheetah population. We have
been working with them for a number of years and currently have our own collars on three
cheetahs and a range of other predators.
It will be essential for the biologist to spend two three-month periods in Botswana
undertaking the experimental work. The research engineer will also have the opportunity to
work at the field location.
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