[Texas Eagle]

Okay. Fair enough. So, using "Natural Selection" as your guideline, what did the cheetah and the gazelle evolve from and how is it that the cheetah evolved to be faster than the gazelle?

[CarolinaGuitarman]

"Okay. Fair enough. So, using "Natural Selection" as your guideline, what did the cheetah and the gazelle evolve from and how is it that the cheetah evolved to be faster than the gazelle?"


They evolved from organisms that were adapted to the environments that they lived in. The cheetah is faster because it had the right genetic diversity to enable Natural Selection to select it. It is faster because this capability to run faster gave those who had this ability an advantage in reproductive success. The gazelle is slower because it either doesn't have the genetic variation to be faster or because being faster isn't the be all and end all to reproductive success.

[Thatcherite]

Gazelles are slower that cheaters because they don't have to be faster than cheetahs, they only have to be faster than at least one other gazelle in their herd. The slowest gazelle (or least alert) in a stalked herd gets eaten, but this may often be an old gazelle, that has already successfully bred descendants when it was younger and quicker. Over time the selection resulting from the speed race between cheetahs and gazelles may cause them to evolve, or it may not if their environment doesn't change and they are already highly adapted for it.