Cheetah - 72 Cutest Animals - National Zoo, Canberra.

This is Elsa. She is a three-and-a-half-year-old cheetah, and she is the sweetest cheetah in the world. She's quite a cheeky but fearful little cat, which is normal for cheetah. She resides at the National Zoo in Australia's capital Canberra, where visitors often draw parallels between Elsa and their own cats at home. Being a cat, she does like things her way, and it's my job to make sure that she's happy and things are being done in the way that she likes it. Much like Mittens, the cat at your place, cheetahs purr. They simply don't have the capacity to roar like a big cat. She loves her food, she loves to play, she loves a cuddle. Instead of all-out intimidation, cheetahs use stealth to get results. Skills learned from a young age in the African savannah. Once fully grown, it's simply a case of combining desire with some stretching exercises to spark an extraordinary transformation. Imagine that instead of becoming hangry, that awful cross-pollination of hunger and irritability, a rumbling stomach instead triggered you to become the quickest mammal on the face of the earth. Everything about this cat is designed for speed. So they accelerate 0 to 100 in 2.6 seconds. Large nostrils, as well as a big heart to pump all that oxygen through her body. You can see how her claws are very similar to dog claws. They're not very sharp, she can't retract them, and that's to help her with running, so that gives her grip and traction as she's running. That tail acts like a rudder, it helps her as a counterbalance as well. So when she's changing direction, running after antelope, she can literally change direction mid-air with that tail. But these incredible capabilities are only revealed when cheetahs are hungry. Aside from hunting, they're not particularly aggressive. In fact, they'll avoid any confrontation that could harm them and their ability to run. Cheetahs aren't built for fighting, they're built for speed. So you don't want to be a confrontational cat like a lion or a tiger. You want to be smart and get ready to run whenever the opportunity arises. Yes, this might be one cool cat with some serious swagger. But it's an elaborate deception, a cheat if you will. Because when it's time to go to work, the cheetah is all business in an instant, transforming into a red hot cat with the quickest ground coverage on the planet.