Yeah, these are good ideas. Cheetahs in particular would make nice mascots, but they are not particularly fierce either. You never see them picking a fight with other predators. Their “superpower” is speed, and it is comparable to a hare’s.
The rabbit idea transpired from Vincent’s Monty Python skit where a harmless looking rabbit turned out to be a fierce predator. I see a parallel with how Fortran is widely viewed as ineffective in the general scientific computing community, although it is really a fierce and highly effective computing predator.
ALL ideas are welcome. If anybody has other suggestions, by all means bring them to the table. Maybe we should move the discussion to a thread dedicated to the mascot theme…