Imagine you’re in a high-speed car chase. You’re fast — but the 12-cylinder Lamborghini behind you is faster. Flooring the accelerator and going in a straight line only spells certain defeat.

So what’s your best bet for escape?

Not that we recommend ever getting into a high-speed car chase. But say you were: drive along, not too quickly, and just as the other car is about to close in, make a sharp turn.

That’s the suggestion of a study published today in Nature, although instead of cars it looked at high-speed pursuits between two pairs of predator and prey: cheetahs and impalas, and lions and zebras.