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GREYHOUND RUNNING, MID-STRIDE Wikimedia Commons The cheetah, the world's fastest land animal, can race up to 75 mph for short bursts. The greyhound is the fastest canid, and the second-fastest land animal, with a peak speed of about 43 mph. Cool facts! Now let's watch them run in super slow motion.Note that while cheetahs and greyhounds are very, very different animals, they've independently evolved to have very similar running styles. Both animals use what's called a rotary gallop, in which the leg hitting the ground moves in a circle: front left leg, then front right, then hind right, then hind left. This is the natural running style of dogs, cats, and some ungulates like deer and elk, but different than that of horses (which are built for endurance rather than sprinting speed). They also have a similar two-phase gait: in the first, the body is elongated, parallel to the ground with both pairs of legs extended also parallel to the ground. The spine is stretc...

Delicious, and often nutritious. But is it necessary? DepositPhotos We all hear about how bad red meat is for both the planet’s health and our own. Planet-wise, there’s no argument: The detrimental effects of greenhouse gases from livestock production on the earth’s atmosphere can’t be overlooked. So, for the month of October, members of the PopSci staff are abstaining from all forms of red meat (#NoRedOctober) for the sake of the environment, and, by extension, for our own good. We have to live here, after all. It’s in our best interest to minimize the cow farts. The health implications of eating red meat are a little more nuanced. On the one hand, numerous studies over the years have shown that an over consumption of red meat isn’t the greatest for our bodies. The meat is often rich in fat and cholesterol, and an increase in both has been associated with numerous health conditions like heart disease and diabetes. Other studies have also found that its consumption poses an i...

FYI UNIVERSE Stocktrek Images/Getty Images First, it's important to know that the big bang wasn't an explosion of matter into empty space—it was the rapid expansion of space itself. This means that every single point in the  universe  appears to be at the center. Think of the universe as an empty balloon with dots on it. Those dots represent clusters of galaxies. As the balloon inflates, every dot moves farther away from every other dot. The space between clusters of galaxies expands, like the rest of the universe, at an accelerating rate. (Gravity keeps the clusters themselves the same size.) Edwin Hubble first observed this phenomenon in 1929, when he noticed that the light from distant galaxies shifted to the red end of the spectrum, as though it had been stretched as it traveled through space. By measuring the wavelengths of the light, Hubble observed that galaxies were expanding away from each other at a rate proportional to their distance from one...

ONE BIG FISH Sportex Italia Via Facebook Fishermen are known for their tall tales of big catches. Turns out, this one has a lot of truth to it:  Italian fisherman Dino Ferrari  caught this monstrous 280-pound catfish on the Po River. Catfishes range in size from a few inches to a few feet. The one Ferrari caught is reportedly a wels catfish, which can get up to  15 feet long , making this 8.75-foot long catfish barely above average. We're seeing reports that the biggest wels could be anywhere from more than  300 pounds  up to  660 . Still, it’s not every week you see such big creatures or hear a cool fish tale. CNN reports that (after a flurry of photos to prove it was real) Ferrari released the fish back into the water. The wels catfish can live for decades, though, so maybe we’ll see the same one resurface at a record-breaking size. Read More at: https://www.popsci.com/one-seriously-big-catfish

Tropical Depression Sixteen formed from a vast area of thunderstorms that have been churning off the coast of Nicaragua for the past couple of days. As of Wednesday afternoon, the system isn’t looking too shabby on satellite imagery. The thunderstorms that make up the tropical depression are beginning to wrap around the low-pressure center at the surface, and the storm seems to be developing the healthy, curved outflow needed to help exhaust rising air. The depression has the look you’d generally expect to see from a weak storm that will soon start to strengthen. The system (which will be named Nate if it grows into a tropical storm) is in exactly the spot you would expect to see a storm form in October. Tropical activity in the Atlantic transitions to the Caribbean later in the year, as weather patterns change with the changing seasons. Unfortunately, this is also the warmest part of the ocean right now. The western Caribbean hasn’t seen any tropical storms this year to churn the ...