Such a successful hunt is by no means certain for cheetah. This, the fastest of the world's animals, is the least imposing of Africa's large predators and sits at the bottom of the predator hierarchy. Though displaying great speed and fitness in making kills, it is often robbed of its meals by scavenging lions or hyenas. Even a large mob of hungry vultures can drive a cheetah from its meal.
Reliably clocked at 105 kilometers per hour, the cheetah is the fastest land mammal, easily outpacing the bred-for-speed domestic greyhound. With its narrow waist it is often said to be built more like a dog than a cat, but this is a true feline even though it may have blunt non-retractable claws.
Whereas all other cats - large and small - rely on a "stalk and pounce" approach to capturing prey, the cheetah relies on speed. The non-retractable claws are an evolutionary trade off - they act like runner's spiked soles when on the move, but are not as adept at pinning down prey. Of course, it is not possible to sprint at high speed in the dark, so the cheetah hunts by day and this is convenient in the sense that most other predators are primarily nocturnal.
Cheetah thrives where the habitat is open and suitable prey - small to medium-sized antelope - abounds. They do even better when lion and spotted hyena are not present, and this explains why they have proliferated over much of Namibia (farmers have eliminated the more powerful predators) and soon expand in number when reintroduced to small reserves lacking larger predators.
Female cheetah are solitary and - under ideal conditions - raise litters of two to four cubs every second year. It is no easy task for the mother to provide alone for her family, and there is usually a high mortality of cubs in their first year. Unlike leopards, female cheetah do not have territories, and wander over an extensive area, perhaps remaining in one place for a few weeks and then moving on. Male cheetah are territorial and typically form coalitions of two or more and attempt to gain ownership of an area in which they enjoy mating opportunities with a number of females.
It has been seen that the larger the coalition and the longer the members stick together, the more stable their tenure in an area. Cheetah actively avoid lions and will vacate an area in which a pride takes up residence. On average, cubs gain independence from their mother at around 18 months, by which time they are adept hunters able to fend for themselves.
In the 1980s, work by geneticists revealed that all of the continent's cheetahs were perilously similar in terms of their genetic material. It was suggested that the species must have declined to an extremely low number in the past, such that all the survivors are still closely related. So close were the tested animals in genetic diversity that skin grafts were accepted by individuals which were from completely different parts of Africa - something you would expect only in laboratory-bred mice!
The fears from a survival point of view were that the species would not have enough genetic diversity to be able to adapt to changing environmental conditions, that birth defects would appear, and that a single disease might eliminate entire populations.
The processes of nature often work at an imperceptibly slow pace and nobody is sure whether the limited genetic material does indeed represent a real threat to cheetah. In the twenty odd years since the information came to light, there has been no dramatic loss of cheetah anywhere on the continent. They continue to survive in most of the larger protected areas containing open savanna, and birth defects in captivity as well as in the wild are extremely rare.
Today, there are thought to be some 12 000 cheetah in Africa¹s wild places. They are most threatened in the northern parts of their African range and are all but extinct in south-west Asia.
JNK - Mission Safaris in Kenya
Hope Mission Tours
Reliably clocked at 105 kilometers per hour, the cheetah is the fastest land mammal, easily outpacing the bred-for-speed domestic greyhound. With its narrow waist it is often said to be built more like a dog than a cat, but this is a true feline even though it may have blunt non-retractable claws.
Whereas all other cats - large and small - rely on a "stalk and pounce" approach to capturing prey, the cheetah relies on speed. The non-retractable claws are an evolutionary trade off - they act like runner's spiked soles when on the move, but are not as adept at pinning down prey. Of course, it is not possible to sprint at high speed in the dark, so the cheetah hunts by day and this is convenient in the sense that most other predators are primarily nocturnal.
Cheetah thrives where the habitat is open and suitable prey - small to medium-sized antelope - abounds. They do even better when lion and spotted hyena are not present, and this explains why they have proliferated over much of Namibia (farmers have eliminated the more powerful predators) and soon expand in number when reintroduced to small reserves lacking larger predators.
Female cheetah are solitary and - under ideal conditions - raise litters of two to four cubs every second year. It is no easy task for the mother to provide alone for her family, and there is usually a high mortality of cubs in their first year. Unlike leopards, female cheetah do not have territories, and wander over an extensive area, perhaps remaining in one place for a few weeks and then moving on. Male cheetah are territorial and typically form coalitions of two or more and attempt to gain ownership of an area in which they enjoy mating opportunities with a number of females.
It has been seen that the larger the coalition and the longer the members stick together, the more stable their tenure in an area. Cheetah actively avoid lions and will vacate an area in which a pride takes up residence. On average, cubs gain independence from their mother at around 18 months, by which time they are adept hunters able to fend for themselves.
In the 1980s, work by geneticists revealed that all of the continent's cheetahs were perilously similar in terms of their genetic material. It was suggested that the species must have declined to an extremely low number in the past, such that all the survivors are still closely related. So close were the tested animals in genetic diversity that skin grafts were accepted by individuals which were from completely different parts of Africa - something you would expect only in laboratory-bred mice!
The fears from a survival point of view were that the species would not have enough genetic diversity to be able to adapt to changing environmental conditions, that birth defects would appear, and that a single disease might eliminate entire populations.
The processes of nature often work at an imperceptibly slow pace and nobody is sure whether the limited genetic material does indeed represent a real threat to cheetah. In the twenty odd years since the information came to light, there has been no dramatic loss of cheetah anywhere on the continent. They continue to survive in most of the larger protected areas containing open savanna, and birth defects in captivity as well as in the wild are extremely rare.
Today, there are thought to be some 12 000 cheetah in Africa¹s wild places. They are most threatened in the northern parts of their African range and are all but extinct in south-west Asia.
JNK - Mission Safaris in Kenya
Hope Mission Tours
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