Photo of the Day 187

Yawning Cheetah, Okavango Delta, Botswana, 1999

Photograph by Chris Johns

The world's fastest land animal takes a moment to relax with a yawn on Botswana's Okavango Delta. The teeth of these fleet-footed predators are too small to use as daggers for large kill, but the cats have strong jaws that lock around the throat of prey until the victim stops breathing.

(Text adapted from and photo shot on assignment for, but not published in, "Cheetahs: Ghosts of the Grasslands," December 1999, National Geographic magazine)