Cheetah - Acinonyx jubatus

[LeopJag]

Some basic physical facts -
Height: 30+ inches at shoulder
Weight: 80-140 lbs.
Length: 4 feet - body length; 28 inches - tail length.

Population - It has been estimated that in 1900, more than 100,000 cheetahs were found in at least 44 countries throughout Africa and Asia. Today the species is extinct from +20 countries and between 9,000 to 12,000 animals remain, found mostly in small-pocketed populations in 24 to 26 countries in Africa and +200 in Iran.

Habitat - The cheetah is generally considered to be an animal of open country and grass lands. This impression is probably due to the ease of sighting the cheetah in the shorter grass. However, cheetahs use a wider variety of habitats, and are found often in dense vegetation and even mountainous terrain.



Hunting behaviour - Cheetahs prey on a variety of species from rabbits to small antelope, and the young of larger antelope. Their hunting technique is to stalk as close as possible to the prey, burst into full speed, tripping the prey with a front paw and, as the prey falls, biting it by the throat in a strangulation hold.



Sociability? - Cheetahs are more social in their behaviors than once thought. They will live singly or in small groups. Males (generally brothers) form life long coalitions.

Biggest claim to fame - The world's fastest land animal, the cheetah, is a unique and the most specialized member of the cat family and can reach speeds of 70 mph.

www.cheetah.org/?nd=39

a cute pic


Bravery - given cheetahs share territory with lions, leopards, hyenas & wild dogs, they certainly have been known to perform some 'brave acts' especially in defence of their cubs. Read this -

"'The female cheetah which was so badly mauled by lions nearly two years ago appeared on the Mala Mala airstrip in mid-February, accompanied by an approximately 4-month-old cub. Although her body condition appears good, some of her wounds still appear red and sore. These two cheetahs spent three days in the area and, on the second day, re-appeared well-fed, this after being absent from the airstrip soon after sunrise on that day. Cheetahs will often use such open areas as zones of security, places where they can spot enemies approaching them before they are taken by surprise. They then hunt from these areas, returning from the surrounding regions to sleep off whatever they have managed to eat or to rest until their next hunting effort. On the third day of their stay on the airstrip, the two cheetahs spent their time trying to keep clear of a male lion which had chanced along. The male lion appeared intent on catching the young cheetah, but was constantly harassed by the female as she tried to draw him away from her cub. Of course this particular cheetah female cheetah has a reputation of taking on her bigger adversaries and there have been several instances when she has been observed almost recklessly charging towards lions, leopards and hyaenas. Such ‘un-cheetah-like’ behaviour often takes these stronger predators quite by surprise. It was probably during just such a scene that this cheetah was so badly injured in May 2002. Anyway, the cheetah-lion interaction continued all day, with a lull during the heat of the midday hours. That evening things resumed and again the male lion attempted to find the cub whilst being harried by the mother. This time the lion appeared more focussed and almost ignored the adult cheetah as he searched the bushes into which the cub had run when the lion was seen approaching. But, when they were eventually left to themselves, it appeared as if the bravery of the mother cheetah had won the day and the lion was last seen looking longingly towards both mother and cub, walking, a distance off and towards the safety of another open area."

www.malamala.tv/cheetah2004.htm

Interactions with Hyenas

[LeopJag]

some more pics....






Cheetahs with killed ostrich in Botswana (pictures posted by Maze): 


Cheetah with killed giraffe:



Acinonyx jubatus rex - "King" Cheetah

The King Cheetah is an extremely rare, regal and strikingly beautiful animal. At one time it was considered to be a separate subspecies. Main difference between King Cheetah and the normal standard spotted Cheetah is that its coat pattern differs distinctively. The standard Cheetah's coat is generally a yellow or golden color with a circular spotted pattern of small black markings. The King Cheetah has spots that run together to form several (usually three) black stripes down its back from the crest of its neck to the top of the tail. They also sport dark patch shaped markings, irregular in size and shape along their sides and flanks.



In 1926 a cat, originally thought to be a cheetah-leopard hybrid, was trapped near Salisbury in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). The cat was found to resemble a Cheetah however the coat was not spotted but had long dark stripes down the middle of the back with dark patches on the flanks. Other animals of the same type were found and it was believed to represent a new species, the King Cheetah. It is widely believed now that these animals are merely an unusually marked variant of Cheetah and not a separate subspecies.
Cheetahs are classified in their own subfamily, Acinonyxchinae. Cheetahs have long legs and run down their prey rather than stalking it although they do seek cover to move as close as possible before the chase begins. They also have blunt non-retractable claws. Two subspecies are recognized, the African Cheetah Acinonyx jubatus jubatus and the Asian Cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus venaticus) . However, there is no clear visual difference between the subspecies. Reginald Innes Pocock, was convinced that it was a new species and in 1927 named it Acinonyx rex...but the animal was only to be sighted five more times between then and 1974 when one was finally photographed in South Africa's Kruger National Park.

King Cheetah's are extremely rare with a world population under 30 animals with only 10 of those believed to be in the wild in a few remote areas of Zimbabwe and Southern Africa. The DeWildt Cheetah Centre in Pretoria, South Africa is largely responsible for their preservation and present day population. The DeWildt Research Centre started their "King Cheetah" breeding in the early 1980's where many questions were answered when King Cheetahs were born as a result of pairing normal Cheetahs at the DeWildt center. Often times the King Cheetah is referred to as a "DeWildt Cheetah" which is certainly a fine tribute to their diligent efforts to preserve and protect this animal from extinction.



www.tigerhomes.org/animal/king-cheetah.cfm 
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SPECIALISATIONS
The cheetah's flexible spine, oversized liver, enlarged heart, wide nostrils, increased lungcapacity, and thin muscular body make this cat the swiftest hunter in Africa. Covering 7-8 meters in a stride, with only one foot touching the ground at a time, the cheetah can reach a speed of 110 km/h in seconds. At two points in the stride, no feet touch the ground.

BEHAVIOUR
Cheetahs have a unique, well-structured social order. Females live alone except when they are raising cubs. The females raise the cubs on their own. The first 18 months of a cub's life cubs learn survival lessons on knowing how to hunt wild prey species and avoid other predators such as the leopards, lions, hyenas, and baboons. At 18 months, the mother leaves the cubs, which then form a sibling group, staying together for another 6 months. At about 2 years, the female siblings leave the group, and the young males remain together for life. Males live alone or in coalitions made up of brothers from the same litter. Some coalitions maintain territories in order to find females with which they will mate. Fierce fights between male coalitions, resulting in serious injury or death, can occur when defending territories. Cheetahs hunt in the late morning and early evening. They capture their prey by stalking - until the prey is within 10-30 meters - before chasing. The prey is suffocated when a cheetah bites the underside of the throat. Chases last about 20 seconds, and rarely longer then 1 minute. About half of the chases are successful. In Namibia, cheetahs use play-trees (trees with sloping trunks and large horizontal limbs, usually camelthorns) to observe their surroundings and mark the area. Cheetahs make chirping sounds and hiss or spit when angered or threatened. They purr very loudly when content. Cheetahs do not pose a threat to humans.

LIFE EXPECTANCY
Studies have not been conducted in the wild on longevity; 8-12 years is average in captivity. Cub mortality is high for the species in both the wild and captivity. On average 30 percent of all cubs born in captivity die within one month of birth, and in Tanzania's Serengeti National Park, about 90 percent die before reaching 3 months of age.

NATURAL HISTORY
Cheetah relatives had worldwide distribution until about 20,000 years ago, but the world’s environment underwent drastic changes in the Great Ice Age. Throughout North America, Europe and Asia, about 75 percent of the mammal species vanished. Only a handful of the modern cheetah remained, having gone through a “bottleneck”, and inbreeding occurred for the species’ survival. In c1700 BC the Egyptians were the first to tame the cheetahs and cheetahs have been kept in captivity for some 5,000 years. However, they breed poorly in captivity. The many parks and reserves of Africa offer protection for only a small amount of cheetahs. In these parks, lion and hyena numbers increase, and the cheetahs cannot compete with these large predators which kill cheetah cubs and steal their prey. Evolution has favoured speed and not strength for this species. Therefore, most of the cheetah population is found outside of protected reserves.

www.cheetah.org/fact_sheets/CHEETAHfs.pdf

A video in slow motion, which depicts a cheetah chasing down a young gazelle:

video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7362677266654303023&q=cheetah&hl=en
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Photo provided by Maze via Bigteeth

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Woman killed by cheetah in Belgian zoo

February 13, 2007 - 10:47AM

A 37-year-old woman has been killed by a cheetah after sneaking into its cage, an official at the zoo in northern Belgium said.

The woman, a regular visitor from Antwerp, was thought to have hidden in the grounds of the Olmen zoo and entered the cage after other visitors left on Sunday evening, local police told the Belga news agency.

The woman was a so-called "godmother" to the cheetah under a program at the family-run zoo that allowed regular visitors to participate in the care of animals in the presence of zoo-keepers.

Despite the incident, the zoo said that its security was sufficient and that the cheetah would not be destroyed.

However, zoo spokesman Jan Libot said that visitors would "no longer be allowed in the future to take pictures near small predators or feed animals."

A Belgian animal defence group Gaia called on authorities to close the zoo.

"For years, the park has given visitors the impression that wild animals are harmless," spokeswoman Ann De Greef said.

In response, the zoo official said that it "respected animal security and well-being as well as the law".

The cheetah is one of the main attactions of the zoo, which also includes hippopotamuses, monkeys, lions and, since recently, white tigers

Woman killed by cheetah in Belgian zoo.

[LeopJag]

Cheetah killing ostrich,, OP'd by Maze






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Cheetah Male Attacks Female with Cubs
Date: Sunday, June 17, 2001


We received a superb series of slides by Prof Gert Lamprecht of Bloemfontein on the behaviour of two cheetah males towards a female and her two cubs.

The two cheetah males were seen at a watering hole in the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park. One of the males made a sudden dash for a female cheetah and her two cubs. The mother shielded her cubs with her back and when the male made a lunge for her cubs she retaliated and fought him off.

The second male had by then approached the female who first squatted and then laid down, the cubs once again shielded by her. The two males then moved off for a drink of water. Then the two males again stalked the female that had tried to move further away in the meantime with her cubs.

Our viewer could not stay to see how this interaction ended. This is going to take some guesswork.

Firstly, letÂ’s look at the established facts of male and female cheetah interaction. Except for when they have cubs or when they are tending adolescent offspring, the females are always solitary. Adult females are exceptionally intolerant of other cheetah intruders. Male cheetahs wonder about, either on their own or in a coalition with other males. When they find a female in oestrus the males in the coalition might squabble amongst each other and will definitely fight other males.

The males would be aggressive towards a female in oestrus, knocking her over, slapping at her and even biting the flanks or hind quarters.

Is this what our viewer witnessed? Was this contact between males and an oestrus female? It canÂ’t be! The cubs are too young. The interval between birth and conception is 18 months and it would have been some time before the female would be a source of attraction for the males.

Reference books emphasise that females would act defensively, if not aggressively if they have dependent cubs, but there is no mention that transient males would seek conflict with a female.

Ann van Dyk recounts in her book The Cheetahs of De Wildt how males would bully females without them being in oestrus. Her observations are based on the cheetah kept under captive circumstances. When asked if she was aware of such contacts in nature, she said more and more such anecdotal evidence is reaching her ears. She herself has never witnessed it in nature.

She interprets it as a casual contact during which the two males, most probably still young ones, used or rather abused the opportunity to prove their metal and show just who is boss. They are, says Ann, like teenagers pumped full of testosterone.

Ann says that in the cheetah breeding programme at De Wildt, they deliberately avoid using cheetah males under the age of five because of the aggression shown towards females by the younger ones. Only when the males are sexually mature and their behaviour is not dictated by surging hormones are they then introduced to the females.
www.5050.co.za/inserts.asp?ID=2942
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Cheetahs Suffering More Fatal Crashes During Chases, Experts Say
Leon Marshall in Johannesburg, South Africa
for National Geographic News

June 20, 2006
Cheetahs are world's fastest land animals, able to top 60 miles an hour (100 kilometers an hour).

But their speed, along with their tendency to fixate on their prey while giving chase, can prove fatal.

Cheetahs can be oblivious to hazards such as thorns and broken branches that hide in African grasslands. And headlong crashes can cause blindness or death.

Recent reported cheetah deaths suggest that some of the cats had their stomachs ripped open by hidden branches.

This has prompted the De Wildt Cheetah and Wildlife Centre, a cheetah rehabilitation and breeding facility outside Pretoria, South Africa, to monitor the situation.

Vannessa Bouwer, the center's deputy director, says there is a growing suspicion that such injuries are more common than first suspected.

"We couldn't say for sure before. Because the injuries turn out mostly to be fatal, the victim simply disappeared," she said.

Now the center uses radio collars to track cheetahs placed on game reserves.

As a result, Bouwer says, "we are able to find them and more or less establish the cause of death."

Cheetahs: Grassland Hunters

Experts have known for some time that cheetahs are particularly prone to eye injuries from thorns and spikes.

Bouwer says the De Wildt center recently saw such a case.

"Fortunately we were able to dart the animal [with a tranquilizer] and remove the thorn without damage to its sight," she said.

Researchers attribute the growing number of cheetah injuries mostly to an increase in big cats hunting on foreign terrain.

The cats normally hunt on grassland, but the reserves in which many cheetahs are placed are mostly bushy. Denser, shrubby ecosystems are also encroaching on grasslands in many areas.

Observers have reported the most eye and facial injuries to cheetahs in Namibia, South Africa's northwestern neighbor.

Veterinarians there have been called in to study the problem.

Bonny Schumann, research assistant at the Namibia-based Cheetah Conservation Fund, blames the high accident rate on bushy terrain.

"Cheetah are basically grassland hunters," Schumann said. "But over recent years the habitat has changed considerably to thorny acacia tree types."

She says heavier rains and cattle farming have encouraged shrubs and trees to encroach on grassland areas.

"Cheetah Â… seem to have adapted well to the changing habitat. Still it has become noticeable how many sustain eye injuries."

Henk Bertshinger heads the wildlife studies program for the veterinary science faculty at the University of Pretoria, South Africa.

He doesn't think cheetah injury rates are unusual—particularly for predators that run as fast as many of us drive.

"It is just their daily hazard of being a wildlife species, the way a lion risks getting its stomach ripped open by a horn or its jaw broken by the hoof of a buffalo it is trying to bring down."

"It is a problem for [cheetahs], but I don't think it impacts on their survival," he said.

Orphaned Cubs

A co-owner of Makulu Makete, a private game reserve in northern South Africa, says she recently observed the accidental death of one of the reserves two introduced cheetahs.

Writing in her reserve's newsletter, Jane Chidgey says she followed the source of a static radio-collar signal and spotted Dottie, a female cheetah.

"Dottie raised her head out of the grass, then stood up and took a few steps before flopping down," she wrote.

"To our horror we saw that she was badly injured, with her intestines hanging out from a wound under her belly."

The cheetah died, but her four cubs were found and have been sent to the De Wildt center.

Photographer and businessperson Howard Buffett, the son of U.S. billionaire investor Warren Buffett, photographed a similar accident.

The pictures and description of the incidents appear in a book Spots Before Your Eyes, which Buffett co-authored with De Wildt's founder, Ann van Dyk.

Buffett describes a fatal accident experienced by a female cheetah chasing an impala ram at about 50 miles an hour (80 kilometers an hour) on a South African reserve.

"The [cheetah], during the chase, clears a short log and does not compensate for two broken branches. The rigid branches split the cheetah's sides as if a hunter has gutted her. She emerges with flesh and guts almost dragging on the ground," he wrote.

That cheetah died, but its cubs were also found and delivered to De Wildt.

news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/06/060620-cheetahs_2.html
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Study: Cheetahs not monogamous

LONDON, May 30 (UPI) -- A British study found that female cheetahs in Tanzania are prone to infidelity -- having cubs with several different fathers.

Although the practice is rare among other big cats, the researchers said DNA analysis of the speedy cats found that nearly half of the litters analyzed contained cubs from multiple different fathers, the BBC reported Wednesday.

The researchers said the infidelity could expose the animals to disease but it could also help the endangered species ensure genetic diversity.

"If the cubs are genetically more variable it may allow them to adapt and evolve to different circumstances," said one of the scientists involved in the study, Dada Gottelli of the Zoological Society of London.

"If there is a big change in the environment some may be able to cope better."

The scientists studied 176 cheetahs for about nine years and found that of the 47 litters of cubs born in that time, 43 percent contained cubs from different fathers.

"If anything, this is an underestimate," Gotelli said. "Cheetah cubs suffer high mortality in the first few weeks so it was difficult to get samples from all of them."

Copyright 2007 by United Press International. All Rights Reserved.

www.sciencedaily.com/upi/index.php?feed=Science&article=UPI-1-20070530-13194100-bc-britain-cheetahs.xml
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By Gato Gordo

The book "Cheetah" by South African zoologist T Hunter
This book his a lot of information, that may surprise you. First of all, the claws are half retractable (not completely unretractable like in dogs):


Cheetahs don't prefer prey what stands still:



They attack more than just gazelles:



They can kill young giraffes:



Â…and baboons:



Despite the fact that they co-operate, they mostly kill their large prey alone:



It's legs may look fragile, but they aren't:



Attacks on humans:


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By Dasyurus

A relatively aggressive cheetah, well it did attack a small hippo.

Cheetah and Hippo Interaction

Date: Monday, September 10, 2007

A well-known VeldFocus story is that of the bold jackal taunting a cheetah.
A female cheetah had caught a male steenbok near Tshokwane. A jackal approached and kept on nipping at the cheetah's tail. The cheetah was distracted enough for the steenbok to escape but she again pounced on it. Once again the cheetah tried his tactic of tail-nipping but the cheetah largely ignored him until she could drag her prey to her three cubs which were waiting nearby.

This served to illustrate what poor competitors the cheetahs are. They will readily abandon their prey when harassed. But hereÂ’s a story of a cheetah with a bit more courage and which persevered to reclaim its prize. The photo series is by Jill Doak of Fourways and the event took place at Kwa-Maritane.

It was mid-morning when Jill spotted a cheetah which had just killed a waterbuck – which alone is unusual. The cheetah was feeding when 4 hippos came out of the water. One hippo walked right up to the cheetah and only when it was a few meters away, did the cheetah get onto its feet. The hippo made as if it would charge, the cheetah backed off a short distance, but returned and in turn the hippo scooted of to where the rest of the pod waited. The smallest of the hippos then approached the cheetah and this time the cat did not back off but launched an attack which sent the hippo scurrying for safety. The cheetah returned to its prey. Then came the turn of the second largest hippo to approach the cheetah and it was not intimidated by the cat. The cheetah retreated, and the hippo came right up to the dead waterbuck and started to muzzle the carcass! The hippo calf and then the rest of the pod, approached. The dead buck was explored, bitten, lifted up, flung about and dropped. The cheetah had enough of such antics. It approached and the pod retreated in a huff and a puff. The cat could settle down to feed but was again briefly pestered by the youngest of the hippos. The pod then lay down to watch the cheetah as it took turns to rest and feed.

There are two issues to discuss - firstly, the interest of the hippos in the dead waterbuck and secondly, the cheetahÂ’s response to the presence of the hippos.

The commotion of the kill at the waterside would have attracted the hipposÂ’ attention. Curiosity and even annoyance at the presence of the predator in their territory, would have prompted them to come closer to investigate. This can hardly be construed as an attempt to rescue the buck by chasing off the cheetah. The muzzling and biting of the waterbuck carcass does not come as a surprise - in the past weÂ’ve shown how hippos toy with dead animals in water but also chomp down on them and even attempt to feed.

Brave? Foolhardy? Cocksure? This cheetah refused to be bullied into abandoning its prey. It did back off at times, but then came back to reclaim its prize. Cheetahs can be easily intimidated but this one most certainly is notÂ… it stood its ground against far bigger and mean-tempered adversaries. On the other hand, the cheetah knows only too well that it is far more agile and much faster than these ballerinas of the deep. So, a little bit of bravado on both sides is okay even if just to save some face.

www.5050.co.za/inserts.asp?ID=7936

Reddhole

Short communications
Edited by M. L. Gorman
J. Zool., Lond. (2000) 251, 535±537 #2000 The Zoological Society of London
The cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus) dewclaw: specialization overlooked
Tiziano Londei
Dipartimento di Biologia, UniversitaÁ degli Studi, Via Celoria 26, 20133 Milan, Italy
INTRODUCTION
The cheetah Acinonyx jubatus is an atypical felid, well
known for having blunt, only slightly curved, and only
partly retractile claws, clearly an adaptation for highspeed
locomotion in the pursuit of swift mammals.
However, saying that prey `is usually knocked down by
the force of the cheetah's charge' (Nowak, 1999) is
incorrect, because this predator actually relies on the
claw of the first digit of the forepaw, the so-called
dewclaw, to hook the fleeing prey off balance. Although
(1) this was understood by Indian huntsmen through
their use of tame cheetahs and published (Burton, 1950)
in a natural history journal circulating well outside
India, (2) wounds attributable to the dewclaws of
cheetahs were later observed (Schaller, 1972) on prey
animals in Africa, the area of most research on this
felid, and (3) the information from India was finally
reported (though with the wrong year in the citation) in
an authoritative book on African mammals (Kingdon,
1977), no systematic study of the dewclaw itself, or of
explicitly related questions, has been made. Perhaps the
general connotation of the term `dewclaw', as intended
for a non-functional claw on a rudimentary digit as in
the case of dogs, has masked the importance of what is
not only a strongly curved and sharply pointed, but also
a very large claw in the cheetah. In fact, this specialization
of the cheetah has escaped the attention of
behaviourists (Eaton, 1970), anatomists (Gonyea &
Ashworth, 1975), and palaeontologists (Adams, 1979).
METHODS
The present investigation developed along 2 lines.
(1) Frame-by-frame analysis of filmed sequences of the
predatory behaviour of large felids, videotaped from
television. This involved 3 instances of tiger Panthera
tigris preying on sambar Cervus unicolor, spotted deer
Axis axis and Hanuman langur Semnopithecus entellus;
4 instances of lion Panthera leo preying on Burchell's
zebra Equus burchelli and the blue wildebeest Connochaetes
taurinus; 2 instances of leopard Panthera pardus
preying on Thompson's gazelle Gazella thompsonii and
hare Lepus sp.; 1 instance of puma Felis concolor
preying on the wapiti Cervus canadensis; 9 instances of
cheetah preying on the blue wildebeest, the topi Damaliscus
lunatus, gazelle Gazella granti and G. thompsonii,
and hare.
(2) Measurement of the dewclaw and, for comparison,
the claw of the second digit of the forepaw in museum
specimens, pelts or skeletons.

RESULTS
The predatory sequences showed that tigers, lions and
leopards all relied on a strong impact to strike the prey
to the ground, though depending on the prey's size the
action varied from a blow with one forepaw to the
collision of the predator's entire body. All the claws of
the forepaws and, in the case of large prey, even of the
hindpaws too, were used by the predator as hooking
tools to progress with the mouth towards the prey's
neck, this being reached very quickly, often before the
prey fell down. In the one sequence with a puma the
predator's jaws seemed less important initially (for prey
grasping), but the body impact seemed even stronger, as
the puma leaped to the forequarters of the still deer
after an accelerative dash and struck it with both
forearms while taking full grasp with the forepaws. On
the contrary, the relative speed of the cheetahs to their
fleeing victims was always low, which made the impact
rather weak. All the nine sequences showed that only
when the prey was on its back had the cheetah's jaws a
main role, the well-known strangling action. Although
four inexperienced cheetahs bit a standing wildebeest in
various parts of the body during conjunct attacks, the
prey escaped eventually. Also with small prey (hare) a
cheetah seemed more reluctant than a leopard to use the
mouth, initially. Irrespective of the prey's size the
cheetah forced it down through a hampering action,
trying to anchor one forelimb or both to the prey's
body. Cheetahs `hanging' on large animals (wildebeest)
clearly showed dewclaws being their only hooking tools.
The analysis of dewclaw relative size (Table 1) met, in
part, the behavioural observation. In the tiger, lion and
leopard, the dewclaw is only slightly larger than the
claw of the second digit, which matches the joint action
of these (and the other) forepaw claws in predation. The
cheetah clearly shows an enlarged dewclaw, as expected
from the separate role of this claw. The intermediate
size of the dewclaw of the puma is an unexpected result,
however.
DISCUSSION
Both the behavioural and the morphological analyses
confirm the special role of the dewclaw in the cheetah: a
strong hook to stop running animals by using the
energy of the victim itself. However, this would hardly
be an explanation for the rather large dewclaw in the
puma. The one behavioural sequence analysed in this
study is in line with the habit of the puma making
short-distance, surprise attacks (Nowak, 1999). For the
massive action of limbs to strike the prey this felid seems
closer to representatives of the genus Panthera, these
showing no special size or use of their dewclaws.
When the novel idea of a close relationship between
the cheetah and puma was proposed, their dewclaws
were not taken into consideration: Adam's (1979) statement
that the Old World cheetah lineage had the limbs
specialized as `strictly propulsive structures', is inaccurate
because of the predatory dewclaw of the extant
cheetah. The present finding of the puma as an intermediate
between the cheetah and other large felids
for dewclaw size, supports the idea (van Valkenburgh,
Grady & KurteÂn, 1990) that, despite some later reversal
to a more primitive, typically feline structure, the puma
originated from felids like the fossil cheetah-like cat
Miracinonyx inexpectatus of North America, which had
longer, more cursorial limbs (though maintaining fully
retractile claws) and, as far as one can judge from
phalanx size, larger dewclaws than the extant puma.
Therefore, although a more behavioural study may
suggest some special adaptation of the puma's
dewclaw, its rather large size may be a leftover
character, instead.
Although the dewclaw seems to have an important
role in the predatory function of the forepaw in all
felids, and thus it is properly not a `dewclaw', in the
cheetah it seems to have taken on the predatory
function of the entire forepaw, as the other claws lost
this function because of locomotory adaptation. A
special study of fossil felids with robust first digits, as
well as of extant felids with large dewclaws, would help
to understand the progress towards cheetah dewclaw
specialization, which has perhaps occurred with less
extreme outcomes along other lines of felid evolution.

Here's some further information - including cheetahs & their important dew (hunting) claw.

Unlike other large predators such as the wolf or the spotted hyena, which essentially kill
their prey by pulling it down and eating it while still alive, cats in general tend to dispatch their
chosen victims first, before they start to consume it. In cats, large claws and powerfully
developed anterior limbs are ideally suited to catch prey and retaining a hold while wrestling
it into a position where the canines may be employed in a bite (TURNER & ANTÓN, 1996).
Canids lack retractile claws and their canines are less developed, so that sheer weight of
numbers is often the most important element in bringing down prey.
The precise hunting technique, which includes the method of capture and dispatch,
depends on the size of the cat, its overall morphology and the size and type of prey.
Moreover, the mode of hunting also depends upon the social structures observed in various
felids, meaning if they hunt in prides or rather solitary.
It is generally noticed that especially in cats, a strong interaction of innate and learned
patterns of behavior is of great importance. Cats develop an early interest in chasing
anything that moves, and will go through an elaborate sequence of crouching, wriggling the
hind-quarters, and pouncing (TURNER & ANTÓN, 1996). However, what they seem less
secure about is what to do with the object once they have seized it, although the neck region
appears to be sought instinctively. Female cats have been observed of bringing live prey for
their kittens to practice capture and killing. In addition, at a certain age the young offspring
will join their mother in hunting, this way they get to learn what prey to take and how it is
supposed to be killed.
For modern pantherine cats, smaller prey is killed by a bite at the rear of the neck, thereby
the upper canines drive between the vertebrae and severe the spinal cord (LEYHAUSEN,
1965; SCHALLER, 1967 & 1972; GONYEA, 1976). Larger animals like ungulates require
different approaches. They developed posteriorly directed horns along with an increase in
length of the cervical spines, which possibly evolved, in part, for protection against predators.
Prey animal of large size are rarely knocked over by the impact of the predators body;
instead during the pounce, the hind feet of the felid usually do not leave the ground. The
prey is seized and the predator pulls the prey towards itself. In this manner, as the victim is
pulled down, the predator is able to maintain contact with the prey, and in doing so controls
the victimÂ’s movements (LEYHAUSEN 1965b; SCHALLER, 1967 & 1972; KLEIMANN &
EISENBERG, 1973).



Prey is usually grabbed by the throat or the muzzle with a strong bite, at which it is aided by
its long retractile claws and powerful front legs (see Figure 7.1 and 7.2). Death results
mostly from suffocation rather than a violent and bloody end (TURNER & ANTÓN, 1996). This
technique may be used to avoid the pointed horns that protect the nape of the neck in many
ungulate prey species (GONYEA, 1976).

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The cheetah on the other hand is forced to employ a different hunting method, because its
claws canÂ’t be used as a grasping device, and its body proportions are that of a sprinter, lean
and long. However, like many of the other cats it is perfectly adept at the stalk to bring itself
closer to its prey. The final rush takes the form of a high speed chase, often over several
hundred meters, during which the twists and turns of the usually small prey are relentlessly
followed. The capture is achieved at high speed, normally not by a leap onto the back of the
animal but by clawing at one side of the rear of the prey and pulling backward in a complex
and carefully coordinated maneuver. This causes the prey to lose balance and collapse, and
usually results in its tumbling over. The large dewclaw on the inside of the cheetahÂ’s front
paw is employed in this technique, in effect “hooking” the back leg of the unfortunate animal. Finally, it will be seized by the throat and strangled (NOWAK, 1991).



Source - KILLING BEHAVIOR IN SMILODON FATALIS (MAMMALIA, CARNIVORA, FELIDAE) BASED ON FUNCTIONAL ANATOMY AND BODY PROPORTIONS OF THE FRONT- AND HIND LIMBS - JENS-UWE SCHMIEDER, JULY 2000.[/quote]
____________________________________________________________

Cheetah Coalition Hunts Wildebeest

Date: Sunday, September 24, 2006

Producer: Ronnie Watt
E-mail: [e-mail]

As in this case. A coalition of three cheetahs has attacked a sub-adult wildebeest and not even their combined weight can bring it down immediately. One cheetah precariously straddles the neck, wedged behind the wildebeestÂ’s horns - a risky place to be! Another has lunged for the throat and risks being trampled while the third harries the prey elsewhere. None of this makes the wildebeest go down and the struggle is tapping the energy of the cats.

One cheetah lets go and scouts the area - it is nervous. The wildebeest herd approach to assist the youngster in distress and the cat gives chase.

With only two of the cheetahs grappling with the wildebeest and the preyÂ’s stubborn refusal to submit, the chances of a kill increasingly appears remote. But the third cat re-appears and manages to hook a rear leg and trips the wildebeest onto its side. One cheetah keeps the prey down while the other strengthens the grip on the windpipe. The cheetahÂ’s canines are small and do not penetrate deep, but the grip is vice-like and death is inevitable through suffocation.

With the prey dead, two of the cheetahs wander off. The third one tries to drag it closer to cover but it is far too heavy a burden. All three cats are then seen in cover and once again they are nervous - vultures have spotted the kill and are closing in and this could attract other predators. Cheetahs will make way for lions and will easily surrenders their kills to hyenas. But no predators appear and two of the cheetahs join forces to drag the wildebeest carcass out of sight.

This scene was recorded by Tony Ferri of Nelspruit in the Kruger National Park. The size of the wildebeest prey is larger than usual. Cheetahs have a limited range of prey ranging from steenbok and young giraffe to very young wildebeest calves. More than 80 percent of the kills in our sub-region are duiker, steenbok, impala, reedbuck and nyala.

Cheetah males in coalitions usually work together to herd and isolate prey but they usually attack singly. They do assist one another to pull down larger catches when collective strength is required but generally speaking, the risks and energy expenditure are not justified.

The cheetah has a valuable tool to bring down prey - the dewclaws which are situated high on the forepaw. These are sharply curved and by hooking a dewclaw into the flank or back of prey and then yanking backwards, the prey can be brought down.

Usually a cheetah will grapple for no more than 4 or 5 minutes before the prey succumbs. But here the struggle was a prolonged affair. And for most of that time, the three cats were at serious risk of being injured. They were either desperate for food or they spotted a weakness, possibly an injury to the calf.

www.5050.co.za/inserts.asp?ID=7289

Cheetahs and Ostrich
Date: Sunday, October 21, 2001

Lin KimberleyÂ’s video deserves to be shared because it shows a cheetah (jagluiperd) hunting an ostrich (volstruis)! Ostrich prey has been recorded as uncommon for cheetah, but to actually witness such a kill is rare.
This is Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park and a female cheetah is noticed stalking something. One step at a time she moves closer and she focuses an ostrich about 200 meters away. With no cover left she launches herself into a sprint across the flat open plains.

The cheetahÂ’s maximum speed is 112 kilometers per hour!

The ostrich tries to escape but evidently had an injured foot and the cheetah manages to bring it down quickly.

Our viewer then drove closer to the scene. The female still has the ostrich pinned to the ground. Presumably she has the neck clamped in her jaws and is using her body weight to hinder movement.

A second cheetah approaches and hovers about, and then a third cheetah ambles closer - both are presumably her cubs.

The ostrich still tries to get away, kicking with its dangerous claw. One of the cubs dashes in and grabs the thigh and then lies on the leg - getting knocked around a bit. Eventually the mother stands up and drops the now lifeless neck.

The cheetahÂ’s principal prey is any medium-sized or small bovid or their young, ground-living birds and small mammals including guinea fowl, bustards, hares and porcupines. Because its canines are short, the cheetah has to apply pressure to the windpipe to suffocate the prey rather than killing by a forceful bite.

The video does not illustrate this so distinctly, but you can gather that the ostrich is quite helpless and can merely spread and flap its wings half-heartedly, its powerful legs and deadly feet ineffective as it lies pinned down.

In her book, the naturalist Nan Wrogeman recounts a report that she heard of a cheetah hunting an ostrich. There are also drawings in the book to illustrate what happened.

The cheetah chased a running ostrich and when it was within range, it flung itself onto the side of the bird, holding on to one of the wings which the ostrich holds open while in flight. In this instance, the bird was not brought to the ground immediately and it dragged the cheetah for some 100 meters. At last the cheetah toppled it to the ground and clamped its jaws over the windpipe. After some time, the ostrich succumbed.

You might wonder why the other two cubs did not join with more enthusiasm in the kill. Well, the youngsters will let the mother do the stalking and catching - learning by watching her. Only when they are ready to be kicked out of the mother's territory will they start taking a leading role in catching larger prey.

Females are mostly solitary and has to fend for her young on her own whilst males often form a coalition of two or three to make hunting easier.

www.5050.co.za/inserts.asp?ID=2993

Coalition and the Zebra

Yesterday evening we were following a coalition of 3 male cheetah down the road when suddenly they crouched down, noticing some zebra we stopped and watched. What happened next transpired so fast, the zebra ran the cheetah ran and I drove. We turned a bend just in time to see 2 of the cheetah lunging at a fully grown stallion - we realised very soon that the stallion must have been trying to help the foal that the 3rd cheetah had on the ground. We all know that cheetah can run fast, but seeing them in action is truly amazing. We watched for a while while the cheetah fed. After a drinks stop, we returned to find the entire zebra herd, not more than 5 meters from the feeding cheetah. One by one the zebras came forward, looked at the foal and then moved off. A strange sight bringing up lots of questions about animal behaviour. Why would the zebra return?

www.wildwatch.com/sightings/coalition-and-the-zebra

Cheetahs on the Serengeti

(The comments attached to the photos are not mine but obviously the Photographers).

Lions were at the top of my most-desired list for this trip but cheetahs were a close second. We didn't see any at the first two parks but our first afternoon at the NCA - Serengeti border we photographed one on a gazelle kill and the next morning we found two males hunting together as they flushed a hare and caught it. We also photographed two cheetahs on a zebra foal kill in late evening light. Cheetahs surrender kills to lions or hyenas so they eat as fast as possible before the bullies arrive and you can park your 4x4 very close to them without bother.

The shots below are from our best cheetah sighting, a pair of cheetahs running down a wildebeest. These two males were the dominant cheetahs in this area and researchers said they had killed three other males the past months . We found them in the shade around 10 AM, an hour past good light and two-plus hours past the "sweet light" of early morn, but you learn to make do with what's available.

This is one of the pair of dominant males, shown yawning in the shade shortly before stalking a herd of wildebeests



This image was taken when one of them rose while still in the shade ... I simply overexposed the background to get enough light on the cat, and I like this effect even though it breaks several "rules" of photography.



Moments after I took the above photo both cheetahs stretched and strolled away from their shade tree ... and then they saw a small herd of wildebeests a few hundred yards away and checked them out carefully (photo below). I would have bet against them tackling such a large prey animal since there were many Thompson's and Grants gazelles in view and these smaller antelope are perfect size for cheetahs, but it was clear these guys were ambitious.

They carefully stalked to within 120 yards of the wildebeests, who seemed nervously aware of the cats but not spooked enough to flee. Our driver pulled up parallel to the wildebeests, leaving the cats behind, because that's where the final action was most likely to occur if they actually made a kill. We were probably 200-250 yards from the wildebeests, far enough away that we could watch without affecting the drama.

And so we waited ... 10 minutes and one jeep left ... 10 more minutes and a couple more jeeps left ... we toyed with the idea of leaving but I think everyone in our jeep was committed to missing lunch if need be ... after an hour of waiting in the hot sun and harsh light we were down to three jeeps, all from our photo tour group, and were wondering if the ones who left earlier might not be the smart ones.



And then suddenly the lead cheetah's head popped up and he crept 10 yards closer ... "He's up!" I told the guys in our van ... I thought he needed to get much closer to make a rush but he sprung out of his crouch like an arrow shot from a bow and streaked towards the herd. Cheetahs have been clocked at speeds up to 70 MPH (over 100 feet/sec) and he was on the chosen wildebeest real quick ... the two shots below are crops since this occurred far away from our jeep, and the dust is killing the contrast and auto-focus, but it gives a sense of the attack. When we saw a large ball of dust we assumed the cheetah had knocked the wildebeest down and we drove over quickly.




At the kill site the lead cheetah had a death grip on the yearling wildebeest's throat. The head was twisted 180 degrees but the wildebeest was still kicking vigorously when the second cheetah grabbed a hind leg and pulled, immobilizing the gnu. The second cheetah began to eat as soon as the gnu quit kicking but the first cheetah held the throat grip for almost four minutes until the wildebeest was well and truly dead. Then he stood behind the eating cheetah, watching for signs of lions or hyenas as the other one ate. He was panting hard, as if exhausted by the chase and kill.



Once the second cheetah had eaten his fill he stood and moved back so the one who had grabbed the throat could eat. The shot below shows the cheetah that ate first scanning the horizon for signs of lions and hyenas, breathing heavily. What an incredible display of prowess on the part of this pair of cats. We were very glad we waited it out.



When we first saw these cheetahs they were walking to our left like in the second photo from the top on this web page, and someone remarked how beautiful and unmarked their coats were. But when they turned to the right we could see this ugly open gash on the hindquarters of the cheetah who has the neck grip on the wildebeest. Cheetahs are attacked by lions and hyenas and by other cheetahs, but this wound looks to me like it was caused by the horn of a prey animal, judging by the thickness of the gouge on the fur above the open wound. If it becomes infected or if the cheetah has even a slight limp from the wound and slows down half a step he will likely die an early death, but this one was still agile and fast enough to run down a hare and strong enough to choke a wildebeest so hopefully he can avoid infection and continue to thrive.



We saw six different cheetahs at the Serengeti. The two dominant males shown killing a wildebeest were seen on three different days and the other four were only seen once each.

The first two photos show a female that was rolling on the grass and acting like a domestic cat before strolling across the boundary with the National Park and leaving us.




This one has killed a Thomson's gazelle and is eating quickly while scanning the horizon for hyenas or lions, which will take the kill from him if given a chance. We could ID him as a separate cheetah from the other males because of the scar on his left front shoulder.



This is one of two young cheetahs that killed a zebra foal late in the afternoon and were wolfing it down quickly. All the other cheetahs we saw were on open plains but these two had killed near a stream bed in a wooded area and have to be very alert for hyenas and lions, which will kill them if given a chance. A cheetah can easily outrun a lion or hyena but in this wooded area they can't see very far so they had to be alert for an ambush. These were the two most nervous cheetahs we saw.



time for a break,,, more later...

[LeopJag]

The first ever cheetah born in Mountain Zebra National Park

March 2008. Park rangers first spotted four cubs, along with their two-year old mother, in the Kranskop area of the Mountain Zebra National Park. These cubs were estimated to be about 6 weeks old. Amazingly, several days later, the rangers spotted that another four cubs, about 4 weeks old, had been born to the other female cheetah in the Park.
Reintroduced into Mountain Zebra National Park in 2007
Two male and two female cheetah were released into the Park last year, becoming the first large predators to inhabit the Park since its proclamation in 1937 and fulfilling an important function in restoring the predator-prey balance, as well as enriching the biodiversity of the Park.



The female cheetahs are sisters and just two years old, a young age for cheetahs to give birth. In an area supporting a larger population of cheetah, the breeding of young females such as these would have been suppressed by older females. Female cheetahs disperse after leaving their mothers, taking between one and one and a half years to settle in to new territories before breeding.

No Competing Predators
Although cheetah cubs do not generally have a very good survival rate, it is expected that most, if not all, of the ParkÂ’s cubs will survive as they do not face a threat from other large predators. The two new litters of cubs may have been fathered by both of the two male cheetahs in the Park as both males in a coalition usually mate with the female cheetah. According to recent research conducted in the other African national parks, individual cubs in a single cheetah litter may even be fathered by unrelated males in a coalition.

Male Cheetahs Chosen for their Genes
The male cheetahs in Mountain Zebra National Park were sourced from the De Wildt Cheetah and Wildlife Trust, who relocated them from the north western Kalahari area. Males are specifically chosen from different geographical locations to ensure that they are unrelated and hence provide a larger gene pool. Before relocation to the Park, the males were bonded into a coalition by slowly introducing them to each other over many months, first in adjoining camps and then in the same camp. Male coalition members bond for life.



Radio Tracking
Cheetah in Mountain Zebra National Park are monitored by means of radio tracking to enable rangers and researchers to study their patterns of movement and ensure that they acclimatise well to their new home. Research focuses on the prey selection, habitat selection and feeding patterns of the cheetah, as well as the change in vigilance and behaviour of the antelope species they target.

Listed as ‘Vulnerable’ on the IUCN’s Red Data List, cheetah in national parks are managed as part of a metapopulation to ensure that genetic diversity is maximized, leading to a more robust population.

www.wildlifeextra.com/cheetah-cubs829.html

[LeopJag]

Cheetah Prey Preference

By Reddhole



Cheetah

Here is the study:

www.zbs.bialowieza.pl/publ/pdf/1596.pdf

Abstract
As a charismatic carnivore that is vulnerable to extinction, many studies have been
conducted on predation by the cheetah Acinonyx jubatus. Cheetah are generally
considered to capture medium-sized prey; however, which species are actually
preferred and why has yet to be addressed. We used data from 21 published and
two unpublished studies from six countries throughout the distribution of the
cheetah to determine which prey species were preferred and which were avoided
using JacobsÂ’ index. The mean JacobsÂ’ index value for each prey species was used
as the dependent variable in multiple regression, with prey abundance and prey
body mass as predictive variables. Cheetah prefer to kill and actually kill the most
available prey present at a site within a body mass range of 23–56 kg with a peak
(mode) at 36 kg. Blesbok, impala, ThomsonÂ’s and GrantÂ’s gazelles, and springbok
are significantly preferred, whereas prey outside this range are generally avoided.
The morphological adaptations of the cheetah appear to have evolved to capture
medium-sized prey that can be subdued with minimal risk of injury. Coincidentally,
these species can be consumed rapidly before kleptoparasites arrive. These
results are discussed through the premise of optimality theory whereby decisions
made by the predator maximize the net energetic benefits of foraging. Information
is also presented that allows conservation managers to determine which prey
species should be in adequate numbers at cheetah reintroduction sites to support a
cheetah population. Conversely, these results will illustrate which potential prey
species of local conservation concern should be monitored for impact from
cheetahs as several species are likely to be preyed upon more frequently than
others.

Here are the details on the specific prey species. Species with a small + or - next to them have enough data to be "statistically significant" (i.e. baboon, blesbok, bush pig, etc.).



___________________________________________________________

Iranian cheetahs GPS-collared for the first time
Saturday 3 March 2007

Biologists from the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) have fitted critically endangered cheetahs in Iran with Global Positioning System (GPS) collars. Thismarks the first time this population of Asiatic cheetah can be tracked remotely. WCS is working with the Iranian Department of Environment to protect the Asiatic cheetah found only in the extremely arid habitat around Iran's Kavir Desert. The conservation groups that on 60-100 Asiatic cheetah remain in the wild, making it one of the world's most endangered cats.

"This is an amazing milestone in securing the long-term future for the Asiatic cheetah," said Wildlife Conservation Society biologist Dr. Luke Hunter, who led the international team. "We know very little about the important ecological needs of the species in Iran except that they require vast areas for their survival. Understanding their movements as they travel between reserves is one of the first steps in establishing a plan to secure and connect the few remaining populations of this incredible animal." Pictures afterwards ->

WCS notes that the population of the species has fallen significantly since the early years of the 1979 revolution in Iran. "Once ranging from the Red Sea to India, the Asiatic cheetah today is hanging on by only the thinnest of threads," WCS stated in a release. "In the 1970s, estimates of the number of cheetahs in Iran ranged from 100 to 400 animals. But widespread poaching of cheetahs and their prey during the early years of the 1979 revolution, along with degradation of habitat due to livestock grazing, have pushed this important predator to the brink of extinction. Historically cheetahs have played a significant role in Iranian culture, being trained by its emperors to hunt gazelles in ancient times."

Elsewhere the Asiatic cheetah has gone extinct. WCS says that they disappeared from most of the Middle East about 100 years ago and India in 1947. "These captures herald a new era of conservation in Iran," added Dr Hooshang Ziaie, Iranian biologist and director of the project in Iran. "This is the first time we have successfully deployed these collars in Iran, and the data they provide will enable us to make very specific recommendations for conserving cheetahs for future generations. We are delighted that this international collaboration is producing such important outcomes."

news.mongabay.com/2007/0301-cheetah.html



Female Asiatic cheetah captured with a remote camera in Iran.



A male cheetah held securely but gently in a ‘soft-catch' foot-hold snare. The technique is one of the safest ways to capture cheetahs and allows scientists to sedate the animals for radio-collaring; both recent captures took place without a hitch.
news.mongabay.com/2007/0301-cheetah.html
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Impressive Widebeest Kill by a Cheetah Coalition :


___________________________________________________________

Male Cheetah Bark Triggers Female Ovulation


Matt Kaplan
for National Geographic News
January 9, 2009

Male cheetahs turn females on—literally.

That's because a specific bark triggers the female reproductive system to release eggs, researchers have found.

Unlike other cat species, female cheetahs ovulate rarely and at unusual times. They also lack a regular reproductive cycle.

All this makes them tough to breed in captivity.

But now, scientists know why—and the discovery may boost efforts to breed the rare cats.

A team of bioacoustics experts studying cheetah vocalizations stumbled onto the discovery.

They noticed that the male's "stutter bark" was made days before breeding took place, said research leader Matt Anderson at the San Diego Wild Animal Park.

Because calls unique to a single gender are often associated with reproduction, Anderson and his colleagues took a closer look.

Heightened Hormones

The team introduced a sexually mature female cheetah to two males during a series of experiments, recording calls made by the cats and monitoring the hormones found in their feces.

They discovered that male stutter-bark calls triggered increases in the reproductive hormones estrogen and progesterone in the females' feces.

By recording and analyzing stutter-bark rates, the researchers showed that increases in stutter-barking steadily raised the female reproductive hormones responsible for ovulation.

"We never expected to see such a tight link between the vocalization and the hormone levels," Anderson said of the research, which has not yet been published in a journal.

"This came a real surprise."

Conservation Boost

The finding has big implications for breeding the rare cat, the researchers said.

The cheetah has an estimated adult population of only 7,500, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

The only known wild cheetah population outside of Africa today is a critically endangered group of fewer than a hundred in Iran.

"I think this just goes to show that telephone sex evolved before telephones," said co-researcher Fred Berkovitch, an ecologist at the San Diego Wild Animal Park.

"By documenting how sound makes animals horny, we hope to improve conservation-breeding programs."

Booty Call of the Wild

Using sound to jump-start reproduction is common among birds, but in mammals it is almost unheard of, experts say.

Male red deer are known to roar to advance the timing of ovulation in females, for instance.

But a male mammal using a signal to activate a reproductive cycle in a female has never been observed before.

Dan Blumstein, an ecologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, said the findings were "neat, but not unexpected."

The new research illustrates nicely how much can be done to improve breeding of endangered species by watching behaviors and studying hormones in the animals' waste, Blumstein added.



Call it "ovulation on demand"—a bizarre bark from a male cheetah (above, a young male in Africa) jump-starts a female cheetah's reproductive system, scientists said in late 2008.

The discovery may explain why cheetahs are so hard to breed in captivity.

news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/01/090109-cheetah-ovulation.html
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Speedy cheetahs put through paces

By Rebecca Morelle
Science reporter, BBC News

Scientists are attempting to discover exactly what makes cheetahs the fastest running animals on the planet.

A Royal Veterinary College (RVC) team is using high-speed cameras and a sensitive track to monitor the big cats as they sprint.

Cheetahs can reach speeds of at least 104km/h (64mph) and they can achieve their top speed in just a few paces.

The study is being carried out with North African cheetahs from ZSL Whipsnade Zoo.

Professor Alan Wilson, head of the structure and motion laboratory at RVC, said: "The cheetah is fascinating because it can run 50% faster than any of the other animals we are familiar with, so in terms of understanding what limits how fast you can run, the cheetah is a wonderful animal to study."

Chasing chicken

Just as most domestic cats cannot resist chasing a piece of string, cheetahs also find the temptation of some twitching twine too difficult to ignore - especially if a tasty treat is dangling from the end.



The lure of some string to play with is to difficult to resist

So the research team entice the zoo's cheetahs to run by attaching some choice chicken pieces - wings and feet are a favourite - to a loop of fast-moving string that is pulled along the enclosure by an electric motor.

And as the cats chase the chicken feast, four high-speed cameras, which record at 1,000 frames per second - compared with 25 frames per second for standard cameras - capture their every move.

Penny Hudson, a PhD student at RVC, said: "We use two cameras on each side of the enclosure so we can see the cheetah from both sides.

"When a cheetah gallops, it does different things with either side of its body - it has an asymmetric gate."

The scientists are also using special plates that are embedded within cheetahs' running track.

Miss Hudson explained: "The plates are like sophisticated weighing scales that are able to measure all the forces going through their legs."

Lightning Bolt

The scientists are going to compare their results with other studies that have been carried out on greyhounds, which can reach top speeds of approximately 60km/h (40mph).


The researchers are comparing how cheetahs and greyhounds run

Miss Hudson said: "Greyhounds are artificially bred by us to be fast, whereas these [cats] have evolved for that.

"But cheetahs can run much faster than a racing greyhound.

"So we're trying to get them running at similar speeds to see what they do that's the same and what they do that makes them go that little bit faster."

In speedy humans - the fastest on record being Usain Bolt who ran 100m in 9.69 seconds (an average of 37km/h or 23mph) - speed is thought to be constrained by leg strength.



While in greyhounds, speed is believed to be limited by how quickly the dogs can swing its legs.

But for cheetahs - the reasons are still unclear - so the data from the experiments will be used to examine the forces and dynamics of the cats' legs, their speed, the length of each stride, as well as joint angles and posture.

Miss Hudson added: "We really don't know what it is about cheetahs that make them run so fast - it might be their flexible spines, or it might be their shoulder blades, it could be that they stretch their legs a bit more, but hopefully the data will unravel some of those mysteries."

Wild cats

Although cheetahs' speedy reputation is well documented, there is still a question mark hanging over the top speeds that one can reach.

In 1997, a paper published in the Journal of Zoology gave the figure at 104km/h (64mph). The data came from an experiment that took place in Kenya in 1965, where a captive cheetah was timed as it chased the remains of a Sunday lunch attached to the back of a 4x4 vehicle.


So far the captive cheetahs are reaching top speeds of 54km/h

But researchers think it is very likely that the cats can run even faster than this.

Professor Wilson, whose biomechanics research is funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, said that the captive cheetahs at Whipsnade were so far reaching 54km/h (34mph).

He explained: "We know that cheetahs won't reach their full speed here. We hope they'll get to as fast as our racing greyhounds do, and we hope to get to a bigger space to do this."

The team also hopes to study cheetahs in the wild - where they would like to look at how wild cats run and also attempt to record a more accurate top speed.

Professor Wilson said: "Eventually we'd love to be able to get GPS and video data from cheetahs in the wild that are out and hunting - this is where they will be at the limits of their performance."


The team hopes to study the cheetahs in a larger enclosure

news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8137962.stm
________________________________________________________

Cheetah sets world speed record

By John Johnston • [e-mail] • September 9, 2009


Sarah, an 8-year-old Cincinnati Zoo cheetah, succeeded Wednesday in setting the world speed record for land mammals.


Sarah covered 100 meters in 6.13 seconds at the zooÂ’s Regional Cheetah Breeding Facility, also known as the Mast Farm, in Clermont County. It was her second run of the day. In her first try, she ran 100 meters in 6.16 seconds. The record had been 6.19 seconds.

The zoo announced in July that the record attempt would pit Sarah against Zaza, an 8-year-old female cheetah at Cheetah Outreach in South Africa.

ZazaÂ’s Aug. 15 run in South Africa was postponed because bad weather caused a muddy track. SheÂ’s expected to run in late September or early October.

SarahÂ’s run initially was planned for Kentucky Speedway, but her handlers moved the run to her training facility because sheÂ’s most comfortable there and they felt sheÂ’d have a better chance of setting the record.

The course was certified by the Road Running Technical Council of USA Track & Field.

The world speed record attempts are meant to draw attention to the plight of cheetahs. The International Union for Conservation of Nature lists the species as threatened, the risk level just below endangered. The worldwide cheetah population is estimated at fewer than 10,000.

Cheetahs are the worldÂ’s fastest land mammals, capable of reaching speeds up to 70 mph over short distances. In its natural habitat, the African savanna, it uses that speed to chase down prey.

In comparison, humans are a rather plodding species, at least when it comes to sprints. JamaicaÂ’s Usain Bolt holds the 100-meter record with a time of 9.58 seconds, which he set last month at the world championships.

The zooÂ’s Cheetah Encounter exhibit puts the catsÂ’ running ability on display at 11 a.m. and noon on Saturdays and Sundays through Oct. 4.

In 2000, a Cincinnati Zoo cheetah named Moya set the world speed record for land mammals, covering 100 meters in 6.60 seconds. Moya, who came from Cheetah Outreach, died in January.

MoyaÂ’s brother, Nyana, who lives in South Africa, broke that record in 2001 with a time of 6.19 seconds.

news.cincinnati.com/article/20090909/NEWS01/309080011
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Epic cheetah hunt filmed in HD

By Matt Walker
Editor, Earth News
Page last updated at 08:11 GMT, Monday, 12 October 2009 09:11 UK


One band of brothers has developed a taste for ostrich

Stunning footage has been captured of three cheetahs cooperating to hunt and bring down an adult ostrich.

The high-definition (HD) film of the hunt was recorded by a BBC crew for the natural history series Life.

The behaviour could be unique among cheetahs, which are usually too slight to bring down such a formidable foe.

However, the three cheetahs, thought to be a band of brothers, have learnt how to routinely hunt this largest of birds.

Life producer Mr Adam Chapman describes how the film crew captured the cheetahs behaving in such a striking behaviour on camera.

"It's in a place called the Lewa Wildlife Conservancy in Kenya. The main bit of Lewa is about 60 square miles, it's huge. Basically the wildlife comes and goes off it."

Ten years ago, three male cheetahs (Acinonyx jubatus) arrived in the area, which they soon made their territory.

Male cheetahs often form collations to defend a good hunting area and gain better access to females.

But while cheetahs are incredibly fast, they are so slight that even coalitions usually only attempt to hunt animals that a single male can bring down.


Male cheetahs will often team up when hunting

However, these three brothers have learnt to hunt cooperatively, Mr Chapman explains.

"They are amazing on what they will take on," he says.

While researching and filming for Life, Chapman and his colleagues saw the cheetahs hunting the calves of common eland, one of the largest antelope in Africa.

"If they got really lucky they'd succeed, and if they got unlucky they'd get beaten up by the adult eland or chased off."

The team also saw the cats hunting injured oryx, which sport long sharp horns over 1m long.

"One of them was quite lucky not get skewered in the process. The cheetah are pretty cock sure. They chance their arm. And that's probably how they came to start taking ostriches routinely. By one of them giving it a go."



The epic ostrich hunt was filmed in high-definition (HD) by BBC wildlife cameraman and presenter Simon King, who captured the event early one evening, after tracking the cheetahs for most of the day.

In the film, the three cheetahs can be seen stalking a male ostrich and giving chase, before breaking off midway to hunt an unsuspecting female ostrich instead.

One male cheetah jumps on the female ostrich's back, before the two other brothers join in to wrestle the huge bird to the ground.

"An ostrich is big enough and strong enough to actually run with the cheetah on its back," says Mr Chapman. "These three are hunting prey that it really takes their combined effort to pull down."

"There are a lot of cheetah in Africa, but however long I've been interested in these things, I've never heard of it before and I've certainly never seen it."

"What is special about it is they do it routinely, and they do it together."

The film crew say there is anecdotal evidence that the cheetahs may hunt in phase with the full moon, as it offers the best light at night.

The behaviour of the three cheetahs is so unique that it will likely die out with this particular band of brothers.

"When one of them pegs it and they are forced to stop doing it, that's it. There won't be another generation of Lewa cheetah hunting ostriches," says Mr Chapman.

The BBC series Life is broadcast at 2100BST on BBC One each week from Monday 12th October.

news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8302000/8302054.stm
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Cheetah prey and hunting success rate Kgalagadi Cheetah Project


www.tllf.org.za/cheetahs/report4.html

Cheetah with Gemsbok kill


Camel Killed by Cheetah

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OP'ed by Pars

ASIATIC CHEETAH

In Iran

A report on Iranian or Asiatic Cheetah

wildlife.ir/English/Library/Farhadinia_MiandashtCheetahReport_Iran2007.pdf

According to the reports of local people, Cheetahs kill young camel in Iran too.

"Claims of cheetahs killing young camel, sheep, and goat are rife among the shepherds inside the species habitat throughout the country; however, there was no evidence to approve it (B. Najafi, Jourabchian, and A. Karimi, pers.comm,). Two cheetah scats (FIG.18) as well as a few reports of livestock attack which was
verified by us are considered to be the first reliable evidences of cheetah depredation on livestock in the country."

On page 33 you will see a picture of red fox preyed by Asiatic Cheetah. Baby and Juvenile Boars, Sand Cats are said to be potential prey items in this report.

From wikipedia:

In Iran, the diet of the Asiatic Cheetah consists mainly of Jebeer Gazelle (also called Chinkara), Goitered Gazelle, wild sheep, Wild Goat, and Cape Hare. The Asiatic CheetahÂ’s range is restricted to the Central Iranian plateau. The main threat to the species is loss of their primary prey species, Jebeer gazelle, goitered gazelle, urial sheep, and wild goat, due to poaching and grazing competition with domestic livestock. Habitat loss from mining development and poaching of Asiatic Cheetahs also threaten their populations in Iran. "Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS)" and the "Department of Environment, Iran (DoE)" have started a collaring project for Asiatic Cheetahs in the fall of 2006.

In Iran Urial (Ovis orientalis) and wild goat (Capra aegagrus) appear to form the cheetahÂ’s primary prey today but both species inhabit mainly foothills or mountain slopes, habitats that are difficult for cheetahs to hunt.

In Central Asia

An article on Asiatic Cheetah in Central Asia:

www.catsg.org/cheetah/05_library/5_3_publications/M/Mallon_2007_History_of_cheetahs_in_Central_Asia.pdf

"Few details of the ecology and biology of Central Asian cheetahs are known. The main prey species was goitered gazelle Gazella subgutturosa which was formerly widespread and numerous across the region. Other prey species recorded include wild sheep or urial Ovis orientalis, young kulan Equus hemionus, saiga Saiga tatarica, hares Lepus tolai, porcupine Hystrix indica, small rodents, and birds such as sandgrouse Pterocles spp. (Bannikov 1984, Gvozdev 1989, Heptner & Sludskii 1972, Sadykov 1988). Cheetahs rarely preyed on domestic animals and were not considered a threat to livestock."

In India

From Wikipedia:

In India fifty years ago, prey was abundant, and it fed on the Blackbuck, the Chinkara, and sometimes the Chital and the Nilgai.

...is in low, isolated, rocky hills, near the plains on which live antelopes, its principal prey. It also kills gazelles, nilgai, and, doubtless, occasionally deer and other animals. Instances also occur of sheep and goats being carried off by it, but it
rarely molests domestic animals, and has not been known to attack men. Its mode of capturing its prey is to stalk up to within a moderate distance of between one to two hundred yards, taking advantage of inequalities of the ground, bushes, or other cover, and then to make a rush. Its speed for a short distance is remarkable far exceeding that of any other beast of prey, even of a greyhound or kangaroo-hound, for no dog can at first overtake an Indian antelope or a gazelle, either of which is quickly run down by C. jubatus, if the start does not exceed about two hundred yards. General McMaster saw a very fine hunting-leopard catch a black buck that had about that start within four hundred yards. It is probable that for a short distance the hunting-leopard is the swiftest of all mammals.

—Blanford writing on the Asiatic Cheetah in India quoted by Lydekker

an artcile on hunting with the help of cheetah:

www.catsg.org/cheetah/05_library/5_3_publications/D/Dharmakumarsinhji_1992_Cheetah_hunting.pdf

About India's intention to reintroduce Cheetah. But which is astonishing is they are planning to reintroduce Namibian Cheetah instead of Asiatic cheetahs from Iran:

news.mongabay.com/2009/0709-cheetah_india.html

and latest developments about this project:

ibnlive.in.com/news/state-govts-reluctant-to-bring-the-cheetah-to-india/101109-3.html
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Elusive Saharan Cheetah Captured in Photos

By Jeanna Bryner, LiveScience Managing Editor
posted: 24 December 2010 08:17 am ET

A hind image showing the Saharan cheetah in the Termit region of Niger, Africa, was captured recently by a camera trap. Credit: Sahara Conservation Fund/WildCRU.
Full Size 3 of 3



A camera trap recently captured the elusive Saharan cheetah in a vast desert in Niger, Africa.

An elusive Saharan cheetah recently came into the spotlight in Niger, Africa, where a hidden camera snapped photos of the ghostly cat, whose pale coat and emaciated appearance distinguish it from other cheetahs.

In one of the images the sleek, light-colored cat with small spots on its coat and a small head is turning in the direction of the camera, its eyes aglow.

Its appearance, and how the Saharan cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus hecki) is genetically related to other cheetahs is open to question, said John Newby, CEO of the Sahara Conservation Fund (SCF), who is part of the team, along with SCF's Thomas Rabeil and others, who captured the camera-trap snapshots between July ad August. What they know about this species comes from the few photos they've managed to capture.

"I think we were more happy than surprised when the images turned up, because we knew cheetahs were in the general area because we had seen their tracks on several occasions," Newby said. "However, the area is so vast that picking up an animal as rare as this always entails a lot of luck and good judgment on where to place the cameras."

The animal is so rare and elusive scientists aren't sure how many even exist, though they estimate from the few observations they've made of the animal and tracks that fewer than 10 individuals call the vast desert of Termit and Tin Toumma in Niger home. Fewer than 200 cheetahs probably exist in the entire Sahara.

Losing this cheetah would also mean losing important genetic and biological diversity, as these animals have adaptations for survival in extreme desert conditions.

Their home can reach sizzling temperatures up to 113 degrees Fahrenheit (45 degrees Celsius), and is so parched no standing water exists. "They probably satisfy their water requirements through the moisture in their prey, and on having extremely effective physiological and behavioral adaptations," Newby said.

In an effort to conserve water and stay out of the heat, the Saharan cheetah is even more nocturnal than other cheetahs.

Spotting these cats in the wild has been a challenge. "They are incredibly shy and elusive animals," Newby said. In addition, they likely have broad home ranges since their prey – gazelles, hares, large birds and smaller rodents – are relatively scarce. Observations that have been made suggest they prefer caves and rock shelters as breeding dens.

Among the threats to the pale cat are scarcity of prey due to poaching and overuse, and conflicts with herders over stock harassment and killing of their animals, according to SCF. Apparently cheetah skins are prized as prayer rugs or used to make slippers.

"They are suspected of taking goats and even baby camels, and as a result are persecuted just like most other large predators," Newby said. "Work underway with local nomads is putting together the true picture of livestock predation in an attempt to reduce the arbitrary slaughter of carnivores that has massively reduced populations of cheetah and striped hyenas."

Newby and Rabeil say the camera-trap study will provide tangible evidence for the cheetah's existence in the Termit area.

"The more we know about the animal the better we can conserve it, including pinpointing key areas for extra protection," Newby said. "The cheetahÂ’s presence adds weight to arguments for the entire zoneÂ’s protection as a nature reserve and strengthens our ability to raise support for conservation activities."

The Saharan cheetah is listed as critically endangered on the 2009 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. (IUCN stands for International Union for Conservation of Nature.)

www.livescience.com/animals/saharan-cheetah-photo-niger-africa-101224.html
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Iran's endangered cheetahs are a unique subspecies

By Ella Davies
Earth News reporter
Page last updated at 09:19 GMT, Monday, 24 January 2011


Acinonyx jubatus venaticus


Iran's critically endangered cheetahs are the last remaining survivors of a unique, ancient Asian subspecies, genetics experts reveal.

New analysis confirms Iran's cheetahs belong to the subspecies Acinonyx jubatus venaticus.

DNA comparisons show that these Asiatic cheetahs split from other cheetahs, which live in Africa, 30,000 years ago.

Researchers suggest that Iran's cheetahs must be conserved to protect the future of all cheetahs.

Cheetahs formerly existed in 44 countries in Africa but are now only found in 29.

Historically, they were also recorded across southwest and central Asia but can now only be found in Iran.

Scientists have previously said that cheetahs have low genetic variability, theorising that a "population crash" approximately 10,000 years ago led to inbreeding in the species.

Despite this, five 'different' subspecies are currently described according to where they live.

Genetic studies in the 1990s confirmed cheetahs found in southern Africa (A. j. jubatus) and east Africa (A. j. raineyi) as separate subspecies.

However, it has not been clear whether populations in west Africa (A. j. hecki), northern-east Africa (A. j. soemmeringii), and north Africa and Iran (A. j. venaticus) are genetically different enough to deserve their current status as subspecies.

Aiming to solve the puzzle of modern cheetahs' origins, scientists from the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna, Austria have been working in collaboration with the Iranian Department of Environment and wildcat conservation group Panthera.

Dr Pamela Burger and her team analysed the DNA of cheetahs from a wide geographical and historical range, including medieval remains found in north-western Iran.

"With our data we prove that current Iranian cheetahs represent the historical Asiatic subspecies A.j. venaticus as they share a similar genetic profile with specimen originating from northwestern Iran in 800-900 CE," explains Dr Burger.

The researchers have also been able to distinguish Iranian cheetahs from their nearest neighbours in northern-east Africa which were confirmed as A. j. soemmeringii.

Cheetahs in north Africa, previously considered the same subspecies as those in Iran, were actually found to have more in common genetically with those in west Africa.

By comparing sequences in the DNA, researchers have found that the unique Asiatic cheetahs separated from the rest of the species in southern Africa over 30,000 years ago.

Dr Burger explains that because this split occurred long before the theorised population crash, A.j. venaticus represents a highly distinct lineage.

"The implications of our discovery are that the confirmation of the subspecies is a basis for future conservation management. If the aim is to conserve this biodiversity, subspecies should not be mixed," she says.

Currently estimated at just 60-100 individuals with less than half at mature breeding age, the Iranian cheetah population is classified as critically endangered by the IUCN Red List.

Together with the United Nations Development Programme, Panthera and the Wildlife Conservation Society the Iranian Department of the Environment has established a programme to make conservation of the Asiatic cheetah a national priority.

Conservationists are concerned that time is running out for Iran's cheetahs.

"We have been successful in stabilising numbers in Iran but we still have a long way to go before we can consider this unique sub-species secure," says Alireza Jourabchian, Director of the Conservation of the Asiatic Cheetah Programme (CACP) in Iran.

Threats facing the small population include overhunting of cheetah prey, habitat degradation and direct poaching.

news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_9365000/9365567.stm
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From Dexterous


Although we all know that cheetahs do prefer impala, springbok, gerenuk and similar antelope, look at this picture of a male cheetah with what it appears to be an adult zebra


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From Sicilianu :


White Cheetah

The site io9 has ended their “Cryptid Summer” contest with a winner. The pick was an entry with some rather striking photographs of a White Cheetah in Africa.

The prize of $2000 was won by Guy Combs, who chased down the rare White Cheetah. The panel of expert judges “included Mark Siddall, a zoologist who specializes in leeches at the American Museum of Natural History in New York; Loren Coleman, a widely-recognized expert in cryptozoology and creator of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Maine; photoshop expert and designer Paul Hogan (also known as Garrison Dean, viral video creator extraordinaire); along with io9 editors Charlie Jane Anders and…Annalee Newitz.”

Yes, I was on the panel and felt that the White Cheetah might be a good cryptid choice. Within cryptozoology, there has been some focus in the recent past on the quest for the “King Cheetah,” although it turned out to be a pattern mutation.

White cheetahs have been sighted and discussed since, at least, 1608*. I could see some expeditions out to discover if this new find is a part-albino or a new subspecies of the known cheetah. Of course, it is a real cryptid, an unknown, as yet unverified species, due to the fact it has not been captured, alive or dead, in a modern situation where DNA has been taken, to note one of many criteria. This cat could be one of many things, perhaps, but the speculation is that it is a form of cheetah, naturally. Since we technically do not know what it is, it is a cryptid. (For those still confused, specifically, by what is and isn’t a cryptid, please see what I have written previously on “cryptoterms.”)

Let me share the remarkable photographs submitted of this mystery cat:





See more details here at the io9 site.

Following are the words of the photographer, Guy Combs, who took the images:

Back in December [2010] I was told about this incredible ‘morph’ phenomenon that has not been seen for over 90 years, and that there was a pressing need to monitor and protect it while raising awareness of the species as a whole. The last one recorded was shot in Tanzania in 1921. By ‘morph’ this means a genetic colour variation, the most well known being the ‘King’ cheetah, specimens of which have only occurred in South Africa and Zimbabwe. The Mughal Emperor of India recorded having a white cheetah presented to him in 1608, saying that the spots were of a blue colour and the whiteness of the body also inclined to blue-ishness. This suggests a chinchilla mutation which restricts the amount of pigment on the hair shaft. Red cheetahs have dark tawny spots on a golden background and some desert cheetahs are very pale to be more camouflaged in their environment. There are also reported cases of melanism or albinism, but the latter does not apply to this cheetah. The only reported cases of this morph which scientists believe is a recessive gene like the king cheetah, have been in East Africa from the subspecies, acynonix jubatus raineyii.

I was hooked from the first moment I heard about this, and needless to say I immediately wanted to get reference, but the prospect of finding it seemed incredibly remote. The only hope I had was that the cheetah, a male, was still with his mother and occupying the same area before he reached the age of independence. This time was fast approaching so the need was urgent to find him. Apparently he already showed small signs of conflict with other male cheetahs trying to get to his mother who had come into season again. Here is an account of my search:

I was at home at Soysambu when I got the call that a window of time was open for me to have a vehicle and a spotter plane available to search the 100,000 acre area in which the cheetah was believed to be. ThatÂ’s quite literally the equivalent of a needle in a haystack. So I made my way there there with not a great deal of optimism other than I thought I would get some good background reference.

Our first search was in a plane made by the Israeli army to train pilots and coincidentally called a Cheetah: a small frame of aluminium poles and nylon fabric with a propeller and wheels. I confess to having raised anxiety levels when on small aircraft due to a couple of infamous past experiences, so I wasnÂ’t thoroughly enthused when the pilot (despite being one of the finest in Kenya), explained that we would be doing an hour of mostly low level flying with tight turns. There were two big storms on either side and the air was being moved rapidly between them so we spent most of the flight going sideways. I gritted my teeth and tried to concentrate on searching the ground but it was pretty much a pointless excersise.

So back on the ground I set off in a landrover to search the area, most of which has no roads and at least managed to get some good background reference in the evening light. I figured that I could probably work this one with photographs someone had taken of him as a much younger cub and reference I had of adult male cheetahs. After all, he was just the same but with no spots, right? So I headed to town and met some friends for a few drinks. Then my phone rang:

- “We’ve just found him!!!”

- “did you get any pictures?”

- “no sorry didn’t have a camera”

- “ok I will be up and out there at sparrows!”.

My host was there warming up the plane and getting ready, however I suggested I trade places with someone in one of the vehicles so that at least if he was found I would be able to get some good ground shots. We set off and watched as the plane traversed from one end of the horizon to the other trying our best to follow, but silence on the radio. By mid-morning we once again had to call it off and regroup for coffee. Everyone dispersed and I caught up with some sleep. Pretty much the same thing that evening, and I was beginning to lose hope. Cheetah can cover huge distances at night but usually stay in the same area during the day, and by the following morning two nights had passed. My only hope was that because he was with his mother, that they were still occupying the same area.

Once again, eternally optimistic, my host set off in the plane with another hapless volunteer that had to take my place – I felt like such a lightweight. Turns out that I made 100% the best decision I could have. As we were thundering over the roadless plain in the landrover, I suddenly noticed that the plane had started to circle. My heart shifted into first gear. Our radio was out but the plane had unmistakably made several tight turns and was continuing to do so until we managed to get close to the circle it was making. Of course it happened to be an area covered in large rocks and low trees, so I was sitting forward in my seat, clinging to the dash with my face up against the windshield trying to keep my camera on my lap as we bounced ridiculously over huge boulders.

Then there he was. A white spot in a landscape painted gold by the morning sun. As we got closer we had to be very tactical about our speed and noise level which is pretty much impossible in a landrover, especially when you’re driving over big rocks. Lots of “ok forwards…”, “STOP” and “shhhhhhh!!!” in theatrical whisper. He let us get quite close before hunkering down and slinking off in the direction of even more vehicle-unfriendly rocks. But we managed to keep up and he didn’t seem overly anxious about us. We barely noticed that his mother was following at a distance. We were with him like this for about 30 minutes that seemed like about 5 seconds. Then having punished the vehicle to the extent that I was amazed the wheels were still on, I noticed that he began to move away from us, walking at first, then trotting, then a good run. My heart sank and I thought my last view would be him running away in fear, but it became quickly apparent that he was focusing on something. The sun was in my eyes but I could make out a dark shape moving fast in a perpendicular direction to him. Binoculars out – it was a Serval Cat!!! Next thing we knew he was running at full tilt after this thing, zigzagging first then long stretches of blindingly fast speed. Alas, we were in the worst part of the boulder field and there was clearly no option of a pursuit. So after he disappeared and the dust settled we looked at each other and let out a looooong sigh. Amazing.

I came away feeling as though I had seen Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster. And got photographs!!! This is not my first involvement with cheetahs. IÂ’m very familiar with the species in terms of the personal friendships I have with people who work tirelessly to ensure their survival, and the subject matter I have been asked to paint. From my childhood I will never forget visiting some friends of my parents in Naivasha who had a pair of domesticated cheetah. Oblivious to their presence I ignored a well intentioned warning and took off down their garden, very quickly finding myself face down in the grass with a cheetah on my back. Fortunately my Dad, a well rehearsed rugby player, dealt with my assailant quickly and efficiently. However, at no point did I feel as though my life was in danger. It was just like being roughed up by a playful dog. So in a way I have always felt a strong connection with them, and I am now practically obsessed with this individual animal and the unforgettable experience of finding him and being allowed to spend half an hour or so with him. I hope I have done him justice on canvas.

The painting itself, aside from being the most accurate portrayal I was capable of, includes certain elements that are important to the story. The area is one that accommodates one of the highest densities of cheetah populations in East Africa. This could be as a result of a distinct lack of other larger predators that would be a threat to their existence, a large prey base, and an area relatively protected from development. I wanted to include this latter factor and have faintly suggested a settlement complete with cell phone tower on the ridge in the middle distance. This, of course, is the greatest problem that cheetahs face in our ‘human’ age. The locations is very significant here also, and the distant Ngong Hills together with the setting full moon make it very specific. The sun and moon are intentionally symbolic here too: the moon representing Artemis, the goddess of animals and forests and the sun representing Apollo, the god of arts, amongst other things. The title, “The Phantom”, suggests an elusive, mythical entity that exists somewhere between night and day.
Guy Combs

++++

*The Historical White Cheetah

The Mughal Emperor of India, Jahangir, recorded having a white cheetah presented to him in 1608.

In the memories of Tuzk-e-Jahangiri, the Emperor, says that in the third year of his reign:

Raja Bir Singh Deo brought a white cheetah to show me. Although other sorts of creatures, both birds and beasts have white varieties Â…. I had never seen a white cheetah. Its spots, which are (usually) black, were of a blue colour, and the whiteness of the body also inclined to blue-ishness.
Tuzk-e-Jahangiri

This suggests a chinchilla mutation which restricts the amount of pigment on the hair shaft. Although the spots were formed of black pigment, the less dense pigmentation gives a hazy, grayish effect. As well as Jahangir’s white cheetah at Agra, a report of “incipient albinism” has come from Beaufort West, according to CAW Guggisberg (1975) “Cheetah, Hunting Leopard – Wild Cats of the World,” in his Wild Cats of the World, London: David & Charles, Newton Abbot, pp. 266- 289.
_____________________________________________________________

From Reddhole

Sexual dimorphism is quite strong among cheetahs and is an adaptation to both killing larger prey and male intraspecific competition for breeding rights. The following study shows male cheetahs exhibit significant sexual dimorphism vs. females:

Source: MORPHOLOGY, PHYSICAL CONDITION, AND GROWTH OF THE CHEETAH (ACINONYX JUBATUS JUBATUS) Journal of Mammalogy, Marker and Dickman, 84(3):840–850, 2003

Information regarding morphology of wild cheetahs is scant, and even where data exist they rarely were collected using a standardized methodology. We used a consistent technique to examine 241 wild Namibian cheetahs (Acinonyx jubatus jubatus) to study morphology, sexual dimorphism, growth rates, and physical condition and to investigate how these data compared with those in previous studies. Significant sexual dimorphism was evident for all measurements. The majority of cheetahs were in excellent condition at the time of examination, although old cheetahs and those that had been held captive for more than a month were in significantly poorer condition.

Male cheetah coalitions kill significantly larger prey than females. In fact, the prey is on average larger than leopard prey (male and female average). For example, in the study below male cheetah prey averaged more than 65 kg with a third weighing more than 100 kg. By contrast, the average weight of leopard prey is typically less than 50 kg.

Source: Charlene Bissett, Masters of Science Thesis: THE FEEDING ECOLOGY, HABITAT SELECTION ANDHUNTING BEHAVIOUR OF RE-INTRODUCED CHEETAH ON
KWANDWE PRIVATE GAME RESERVE, EASTERN CAPE
PROVINCE



Howeverthedifferent cheetah groups on Kwandwe killed different sized prey.

There is some controversy over the extent to which coalitions of cheetah hunt cooperatively (Eaton 1970; Kruuk & Turner 1967; Caro 1994). However, on Kwandwe, the
three male coalition accompanied one another on all hunts and actively co-operated in the hunts. On a number of occasions the cheetah drove prey toward concealed coalition partners
(pers. obs). Theco-operation in hunting by the three adult male coalition on Kwandwe enabled them to kill large prey (>65kg), and this has been reported in some previous studies
(Caro 1994; Hunter 1998; Mills 1998; Mills et al. 2004). Male coalitions need a greater biomass of food per unit time than solitary cheetah (Caro 1994) and this need could be met by
making more frequent kills or by killing larger prey. It has been suggested that large carnivores will resist changing kill frequency and that changes in group size are associated
with change in the size of the prey (Caro 1994) and this appears to be the pattern at Kwandwe. More than a third of kills made by the coalition weighed more than a 100kg and in most cases the cheetah remained at their kills until they were satiated. However, the continuous observations on the coalition showed that the cheetah did adjust the kill rate to meet their energetic needs as they killed twice on the same day on more than one occasion. Significantly, on these occasions the kills were juveniles which would explain the need to increase the kill rate. Females with cubs preyed on more medium sized animals than single females and again this can be explained in terms of the increased needs of the group over a solitary female. However, unlike the coalition the adult females and their cubs do not have the power to kill large prey.
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Spotless cheetah snapped in the wild
Photographer reveals pictures of rare big cat with a sandy golden coat and brown freckles instead of dark spots

Steven Morris and agency
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 25 April 2012 17.59 BST
Article history


A spotless adult cheetah at the Athi Kapiti Conservancy in Kenya – the sighting is thought to be first in almost a century.

A rare 'spotless' cheetah has been photographed in Kenya by wildlife photographer Guy Combes, who got within around 50m of the big cat.

Combes, originally from Dorset but now based in California, had heard tale of the spotless leopard and travelled to the Athi Kapiti Conservancy in search of it but gave up after days of fruitless searching.

"I didn't think it likely that we would find the cheetah and went back to Nairobi. I then got a call saying it had been seen again so I spent another two days searching," he said. Eventually he spotted the animal.

"I was really excited as we managed to get about 50 yards away. It was was a staggeringly beautiful animal. I didn't expect to see it at all, the area we were going to search was 100,000 acres without borders and it could have easily been beyond that."

John Pullen, curator of mammals at Marwell Wildlife in Hampshire, who has examined the photographs, described the sighting as "quite rare". He said: "There are some spots still evident over the back area but most are missing. The spots or markings on all wild cats are in fact the skin colour and the hair growing from that part of the skin takes on the colouration, so if you shaved off the hair the pattern would be the same. This is really like a rare skin issue where something has happened to the genetic coding that would give the normal pattern."

Combes captured the images last year but has shown it now after photographs of a strawberry-coloured leopard photographed in South Africa emerged. It also comes as footage and images of a white killer whale spotted off the eastern coast of Russia surfaced.

www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/apr/25/spotless-cheetah-pictures-wild?newsfeed=true

[LeopJag]

The Secret to Cheetahs' Speedy Stride Found

Jennifer Welsh, LiveScience Staff Writer
Date: 21 June 2012 Time: 08:02 AM ET


Cheetah mid-leap with a lure in its mouth.

Cheetahs and greyhounds have very similar running styles, but somehow the big cats leave their doggy rivals in the dust. Their secret: Cheetahs "switch gears" while running, striding more frequently at higher speeds, new research finds.

Greyhounds, on the other hand, seem to take the same number of strides per second at every speed.

Cheetahs have been recorded running at up to 65 mph (105 kilometers per hour) — much faster than a greyhound, which, as the fastest canid (doglike animal), is known to reach 43 mph (68 kph).

"Cheetahs and greyhounds are known to use a rotary gallop, and physically they are remarkably similar, yet there is this bewitching difference in maximum speed of almost a factor of 2," study researcher Alan Wilson, from the Royal Veterinary College in the United Kingdom, said in a statement.

Running wild

The researchers studied cheetahs from the ZSL Whipsnade Zoo in the suburbs of London and the Ann van Dyk Cheetah Centre in South Africa. They also studied retired racing greyhounds from the United Kingdom.

They planted force-measuring plates in the ground and had the animals chase after a piece of chicken. They took high-speed video of the animals in motion and measured the force created by the running animal, calibrated with how much it weighed.

The cheetahs being studied didn't come close to the speeds reported for wild cheetahs — the zoo animals reached 38 mph (61 kph), while the greyhounds topped out at 43 mph (68 kph).

The researchers said this was probably because the captive-born cheetahs have never really gotten the chance to let loose in the wild and run full throttle.

"They have lived in a zoo for several generations and have never had to run to catch food. They have probably never learned to run, particularly," Wilson said. "The next stage is to try to make measurements in wild cheetahs in the hope of seeing higher speeds."

Strut & stride

The researchers did find a few differences, however; for instance, the cheetah's stride was slightly longer than the greyhound's.

The captive cheetahs also were able to change their stride frequency (strides per second) as they reached higher speeds: At 20 mph (32 kph), they took 2.4 strides per second, but at 38 mph (61 kph), they took 3.2 strides per second. The greyhounds, on the other hand, maintained a constant rate of around 3.5 strides per second no matter how fast they ran.

Wilson suspects wild cats may be able to reach frequencies of four strides per second, which, in combination with longer stride lengths, may be what allows them to outstrip their poochy counterparts.

The study was published today (June 21) in the Journal of Experimental Biology.

www.livescience.com/21083-cheetah-greyhound-speed-secret.html
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Animal picture of the day: rare image of Asiatic cheetah and cubs

Jeremy Hance
mongabay.com
July 03, 2012


A rare image of a mother Iranian cheetah and its three cubs. Photo by: Javad Shokouhi/Yazd DOE-CACP.

The Asiatic cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus venaticus), also known as the Iranian cheetah, is one the world's rarest cat subspecies with somewhere between 70-110 individuals left. No surprisingly it is considered Critically Endangered by the IUCN Red List.

"This is a special snapshot of an Asiatic cheetah mother flanked by three cubs in a cave sheltered from the intense Iranian desert sun. This same cheetah mother was featured in a recent Wildlife Extra article that reported on camera trap images showing her migrating between two reserves 130 kilometers or 80 miles apart!" Panthera told mongabay.com of the above image. Panthera, which is devoted to cat conservation, has a program specifically devoted to this subspecies.

Once found across the Middle East and Central Asia the subspecies is now restricted almost entirely to Iran; abundant populations that survived alongside tigers and elephants in India have vanished, and are likely gone from Afghanistan and Pakistan as well.

The world's last population of Asiatic cheetahs remains hugely imperiled by prey decline due to decades of overhunting and ongoing poaching; habitat degradation due to overgrazing and drought; human-wildlife conflict with herders and livestock; and even cubs captured for the illegal pet trade.

Read more: news.mongabay.com/2012/0703-asiatic-cheetah-pod.html#ixzz1zcvY6XTo
____________________________________________________________

OP'ed by 221extra

Cheetah weights:

From "Wild Cats of the World"
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Cheetah's speed secrets are revealed

8 September 2012 Last updated at 00:49
By Matt Bardo
Reporter, BBC Nature


A sprinting cheetah is like "a rear-wheel-drive car," say scientists.

Japanese researchers mapped the muscles fibres of the big cat known to accelerate to record-breaking speeds.

By comparing the cheetah's muscles with those of a domestic cat and dog, the team identified the special propulsion power of its hindlimb muscles.

The study is the first to investigate muscle fibre distribution across the whole of the cheetah's body,

The findings are published in the journal Mammalian Biology and examine how the muscle fibres of domestic cats and dogs compare with those of the world's fastest land mammal.

"The study of muscles is indispensable to understand the cheetah's run," said Dr Naomi Wada, the study's co-author and Professor in System Physiology at Yamaguchi University in Japan.

Different types of muscle fibre are suited to different activities, explained Dr Wada.

In all the animals studied, so-called Type I fibres produced a small force output but were resistant to fatigue, making them best suited to maintaining posture and slow walking.

Type IIa fibre performance was best suited to fast walking and trotting whereas Type IIx or "fast" fibres created a high force output but had low endurance and were key to fast running or galloping.

By mapping the distribution of fibres across the muscles of a cheetah's body, scientists were able to gain insights into the animal's impressive sprint technique.


A sprinting cheetah spends more than half its time in the air

"The forelimb muscles in the cheetah included [the] most Type I muscle fibres of all three animals... while the muscle of hind limb muscles have many Type IIx fibres."

"The functional difference between forelimb and hindlimb is the most remarkable in the cheetah," said Dr Wada.

The team's results suggested that the power comes from the cheetah's hind legs, in the same way as a rear wheel-drive car, according to Dr Wada.

She drew a further automative parallel when describing how the cheetah handles at high speed.

The digits of the cheetah's hindlimbs contained no fast fibres, but the digits on the front legs contained many of them.

Dr Wada explained that this is because the cheetah controls its balance by using its forefeet to turn and slow down.

However, most rear-wheel drive cars cannot mimic the enviable acceleration of the cheetah: zero to 60mph in under three seconds.

Previous studies have indentified the cat's seven metre stride-length as key to this ability. With long, flexible limbs, a sprinting cheetah spends more than half its time airborne.

In order to maximise this effect, it arches and contracts its spine, and Dr Wada and colleagues found muscle fibres that supported this technique.

The cat had a high percentage of fast fibres running along its back and middle, suggesting that it could produce a quick, strong extension of the backbone.

www.bbc.co.uk/nature/19488820
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Asiatic cheetahs forced to hunt livestock

By Matt Bardo
Reporter, BBC Nature
26 September 2012 Last updated at 04:07


Scientists estimate that there are only 70 Asiatic cheetahs left in the wild

Asiatic cheetahs, one of the world's most endangered animals, are forced to eat livestock in areas where their wild prey is in decline, a study has found.

An international team of scientists working in Iran investigated what the animals ate in places where game numbers had been reduced by poachers.

They found the cats had turned to hunting domestic animals because they could not survive on smaller prey.

Safeguarding the cats needs a clamp down on poaching, the scientists found.

The study is published in the Journal of Arid Environments and addresses a conflict that emerged among Iranian conservationists over the Asiatic cheetah, a subspecies of the cheetah that is "critically endangered" according to the IUCN's Red List.

It had been suggested that the Asiatic cheetah might survive by eating more rodents and hares in areas where medium-sized ungulates had declined.

But this study suggests that is not true.

The scientists completed the investigation over five years in two reserves in north-east Iran, near the Turkmenistan border.

The areas had a depleted population of wild ungulates such as gazelle, wild sheep and goats.

By sampling the cheetahs' scat they gained an insight into what the animals were eating in those areas.

Results suggest that while hares and rodents formed part of the cats' diet, they were not a significant source of nutrition.

The cheetahs mainly fed on medium-sized herbivores, resorting to livestock if necessary, according to the study.

"The hare or the rabbit... [are] a very important part of their diet. But that's such a hard thing to catch for so little that it's not sustainable," explained Dr Laurie Marker, founder and executive director of the Cheetah Conservation Fund in Namibia, who collaborated on the Iranian study.

"We need to have the small and medium-sized antelope," she said.

The scientists' study reported that local herders seemed unaware of the Asiatic cheetah's "depredation of their stock", perhaps because the cats are so rare.

But in order to avoid future conflict with local communities, the scientists recommended that anti-poaching regulations be enforced and that other activities in the reserves are adapted to the needs of the Asiatic cheetah.

"After the revolution the game reserves, which were sacrosanct before, were opened up to the communities," said Dr Marker.

"[The cheetahs] are in game reserves and in the game reserves there's been a large influx of herders bringing their livestock, which have reduced the land space for where the prey can be and so the prey gets pushed out."

By enforcing no-grazing zones, the Asiatic cheetah would stand a better chance of accessing the wild ungulates it needs, according to the study.

The Asiatic cheetah in Iran has been compared to the panda in China, or the tiger in India, as a symbol for wildlife conservation.

Some experts thought the subspecies numbered around 200 individuals in the 1970s but Dr Marker said the current estimate is that there are only 70 Asiatic cheetahs left in the wild, all of them in Iran.

www.bbc.co.uk/nature/19705131
________________________________________________________________
By Canidae:

Account from 'Swift and Enduring : Cheetahs and Wild Dogs of the Serengeti' by George and Lory Frame of a male Cheetah trio killing another male. They also later mauled and chased the killed ones' brother, but he escaped.

"All three were chasing another male Cheetah away from the southwest side of the Naabi Hill. They caught him. I hurriedly drove closer and saw the trio biting the legs, body and neck of the unfortunate male cheetah. They were tearing out mouthfuls of fur, and blood oozed from the tooth punctures. As the bit again and again, I heard horrible cracking sounds."
...
"Suddenly all three males again attacked the unfortunate cheetah, who let out some squeals. Tisa repeatedly bit the hindquarters and all four legs. Tatu grabbed the throat, in the same killing bite he used on prey. They chewed and tore at his flesh, and again I heard cracking sounds. Tisa jerked his head from side to side, tearing at the skin. As Tatu suffocated the male cheetah, I heard sickening gurgles as the limp victim struggled for his last few breaths. Then Tatu left go of the limp body. He had killed the intruder."

[creature386]

May 12, 2013 10:25:19 GMT 5 LeopJag said:

OP'ed by 221extra

Cheetah weights:

From "Wild Cats of the World"

More from the same source (quick facts):
-Associations of humans and cheetahs range back to ~2000 years BC.
-Cheetahs are about as big as a leopard, but roughly 7,6 cm taller.
-The slender, eloganted body is supported by tall thin legs and the tail makes up half of the TL.
-The whiskers are short and don't play an important role in prey catching.
-Cheetahs have a very short fur, exept for the fur at the nape or the shoulders (eight cm long).
-The cheetah's skull is unusually short faced, with thin and light bones, who don't show a sign of strong musculature.
-The gape is quite low.
-The canines are small.
-The cheetah's fibula and tibia are bound together, what makes the cheetah more stable, but allows little limb flexibility.
-At a speed of 90 km/h, the strides can be seven m long.
-Top speed estimates range from 90-128 km/h, the most reliable estimate for a short distance is 112 km/h. 75 km/h can be attained within two seconds.
-Cheetahs store around of 90% of the heat they produce (a reason for their low stamina; for comparision, AWDs store 20% of their heat).
-The claws are half retractable (not completely dog-like).
Here the prey:



A link to the book now:
books.google.com/books?id=hFbJWMh9-OAC&lpg=PP1&hl=de&pg=PA19#v=onepage&q&f=false

[LeopJag]

From the same book but amplified and edited to make them easier to read...

Species distribution


Measurements


Prey

[LeopJag]

One way to skin a cat – same genes behind blotches of tabbies and king cheetahs

By Ed Yong | September 20, 2012 2:00 pm



The cheetah’s spots look like the work of a skilled artist, who has delicately dabbed dots of ink upon the animal’s coat. By contrast, the king cheetah – a rare breed from southern Africa – looks like the same artist had a bad day and knocked the whole ink pot over. With thick stripes running down its back, and disorderly blotches over the rest of its body, the king cheetah looks so unusual that it was originally considered a separate species. Its true nature as a mutant breed was finally confirmed in 1981 when two captive spotted females each gave birth to a king.

Two teams of scientists, led by Greg Barsh from the HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology and Stanford University, and Stephen O’Brien from the Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research have discovered the gene behind the king cheetah’s ink-stains. And it’s the same gene that turns a mackerel-striped tabby cat into a blotched “classic” one.

Back in 2010, Eduardo Eizirik, one of OÂ’BrienÂ’s team, found a small region of DNA that seemed to control the different markings in mackerel and blotched tabbies. But, we only have a rough draft of the cat genome, they couldnÂ’t identify any specific genes within the area. The study caught the attention of Barsh, who had long been interested in understanding how cats get their patterns, from tiger stripes to leopard rosettes. The two teams started working together.

Christopher Kaelin and Xing Xu focused on the region that Eizirik had identified, using DNA samples taken from Californian feral cats that had been captured for sterilisation. By comparing mackerel and blotched individuals, the team found one gene that was responsible for the different markings. They dubbed it Taqpep. All blotched tabbies have one of two critical mutations in both their copies of Taqpep, while all mackerel cats have one or two unblemished versions.



Taqpep is also responsible for the king cheetahÂ’s unmistakeable coat. Kaelin and Xu sequenced the gene in Kgosi, a captive king cheetah, and found another mutation in Taqpep, one that greatly enlarges the protein encoded by the gene.

Kaelin got in touch with Ann van Dyk, the woman who first identified that king cheetahs were a mutant version of the regular ones. She runs a cheetah conservation centre in South Africa thatÂ’s Kgosi, and all other captive kings, came from. By analysing all of her cheetahs, van Dyk confirmed that KgosiÂ’s Taqpep mutation is found in all the kings, and none of the 217 wild spotted cheetahs do.

Taqpep is activated in cat skin, and not in other organs. But in both cheetahs and domestic tabbies, itÂ’s active at low levels in both dark and light patches. So what is Taqpep actually doing, and if it isnÂ’t directly changing the colour of the felinesÂ’ fur, then what is?

Another member of the team, Kelly McGowan, found an important clue. A tabby’s markings start appearing when the foetus is seven weeks old. At that point, the cradle-shaped organs known as follicles are fully developed, and they start to produce hairs. If a follicle produces lots of melanin – a dark pigment – it grows a dark hair. So why do some follicles churn out melanin, while others exercise more restraint?

To find out, Lewis Hong looked for genes whose activity varied between the yellow and black zones of a cheetah’s skin. His search yielded 60 genes that were more active in the black spots, and one of them stood out – Edn3.

Edn3 produces a hormone that fuels the growth and division of melanocytes – the cells that make melanin. It’s active in the follicles, and more so in black regions than yellow ones – something that Hong confirmed in cheetahs, tabbies, and even one leopard. When he artificially increased the activity of Edn3 in the skins of laboratory mice, their coats blackened.

Let’s put this all together. The team thinks that Taqpep somehow creates periodic zones in the skins of foetal cats. These zones determine how active Edn3 will later be, which in turn dictates the number of melanocytes in the follicles. More melanocytes means more melanin, which means dark hair. Note that the “zones” that Taqpep sets up are invisible. They only become apparent through their subsequent influence on Edn3. If Taqpep is disrupted by certain mutations, as in blotched tabbies and king cheetahs, it sets up wider and more erratic zones, leading to chaotic stains rather than even spots.

How can Taqpep create these zones if itÂ’s evenly active throughout a catÂ’s skin? There are a few possibilities, but hereÂ’s the most intriguing one: Taqpep creates a protein called Tabulin that usually sits in the membranes of skin cells, but can detach and drift between them. So Taqpep might be active everywhere, but Tabulin can diffuse through the skin and become concentrated in certain areas.

This is really exciting, because diffusing molecules are central to a longstanding explanation for animal patterns. Back in 1952, Alan Turing, the legendary computer scientist and code-breaker, suggested that animal skins could produce beautiful complex patterns through a lively tango between two molecules – an activator and an inhibitor. Both diffuse throughout the skin, and react with each other. Over short distances, the activator reinforces itself, but over longer distances, the inhibitor blocks it. Depending on how quickly they spread and how strongly they interact, they can produce everything from spots to blotches (play around with this Java applet to see what I mean.)

Scientists have tested Turing’s “reaction-diffusion” ideas in many different animals, but it has been next to impossible to find the actual activators or inhibitors. Barsh thinks that Taqpep (or rather, Tabulin) may be one of them, and the team is now looking into it further.

Hopi Hoekstra, who studies the genetics of animal colour at Harvard University, is very impressed with the study. “It’s a tour de force,” she says. “We previously knew very little of about how patterns are formed and maintained in mammals. This is largely because the workhorse of pigment genetics—the laboratory mouse—doesn’t display stripes or spots.” Kaelin’s team got around that problem by studying the diversity of wild and domestic cats. Thanks to their work, we’re getting closer to the real story about how the leopard (or cheetah) got its spots, or the tiger its stripes. Turing drafted the outline, and Barsh and O’Brien and filling in the details.

Reference: Kaelin, Xu, Hong, David, McGowan, Schmidt-Kuntzel, Roelke, Pino, Pontius, Cooper, Manuel, Swnson, Marker, Harper, van Dyk, Yue, Mullikin, Warren, Eizirik, Kos, OÂ’Brien, Barsh & Menotti-Raymonds. 2012. Specifying and Sustaining Pigmentation Patterns in Domestic and Wild Cats. Science dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1220893

Image by Jurvetson

blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2012/09/20/tabby-cat-blotches-king-cheetah-stripes-spots-taqpep/#.UZALhZzfiSo

[LeopJag]

Brief species description and image to copy-paste into machup or vs threads.

Cheetah - Acinonyx jubatus



The cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus) is a large-sized feline (family Felidae) inhabiting most of Africa and parts of the Middle East. The cheetah is the only extant member of the genus Acinonyx, most notable for modifications in the species' paws. As such, it is the only felid with non-retractable claws and pads that, by their scope, disallow gripping (therefore cheetahs cannot climb vertical trees, although they are generally capable of reaching easily accessible branches). The cheetah, however, achieves by far the fastest land speed of any living animal—between 112 and 120 km/h (70 and 75 mph) in short bursts covering distances up to 500 m (1,600 ft), and has the ability to accelerate from 0 to over 100 km/h (62 mph) in three seconds. The cheetah's chest is deep and its waist is narrow. The coarse, short fur of the cheetah is tan with round black spots measuring from 2 to 3 cm (0.79 to 1.2 in) across, affording it some camouflage while hunting. There are no spots on its white underside, but the tail has spots, which merge to form four to six dark rings at the end. The tail usually ends in a bushy white tuft. The cheetah has a small head with high-set eyes. Black "tear marks" running from the corner of its eyes down the sides of the nose to its mouth keep sunlight out of its eyes and aid in hunting and seeing long distances. Although it can reach high speeds, its body cannot stand long distance running, because it is more suited to short bursts of speed. The adult cheetah weighs from 35 to 72 kg (77 to 160 lb). Its total head-and-body length is from 110 to 150 cm (43 to 59 in), while the tail can measure 60 to 84 cm (24 to 33 in) in length. Cheetahs are 66 to 94 cm (26 to 37 in) tall at the shoulder. Males tend to be slightly larger than females and have slightly bigger heads, but there is not a great variation in cheetah sizes and it is difficult to tell males and females apart by appearance alone. Compared to a similarly sized leopard, the cheetah is generally shorter-bodied, but is longer tailed and taller (it averages about 90 cm (35 in) tall) and so it appears more streamlined.

[Ceratodromeus]

Came across this in  Pienaar(1969)

[Infinity Blade]

Claw retraction and protraction in the Carnivora: the cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus) as an atypical felid

The cheetah Acinonyx jubatus is the most cursorial felid and has been described as somewhat dog-like in both the shape and the diminished degree of retraction of the claws. In this study we evaluate and investigate the osteological correlates associated with claw retraction in the cheetah through a comparison of the morphology of its middle phalanges with those of other felids and of the wolf Canis lupus. Compared to other felids, the middle phalanges of the cheetah have better-developed grooving of the distal articulatory facets in both the manus and pes, reduced to absent angulation to the distal articulatory facets in the inner and outer digits, less marked asymmetry of the shaft, and a mid-shaft cross-section that is less triangular and more circular. In all of these features, the morphology of the cheetah is intermediate between that of other felids and that of the wolf. The cheetah's distinctive morphology is autapomorphic within Felidae and similarities between the cheetah and the wolf are the result of convergence. Study of an ontogenetic series of specimens of the domestic cat suggests that the morphology of the cheetah can be explained, at least in part, as a product of heterochrony in which the development of the middle phalanx is truncated at an earlier stage than is typical of the adults of other felids. Some of the morphological differences in the middle phalanges of the cheetah can be associated with its distinctive hunting behaviour. The reduced manipulative capabilities of the forelimb associated with the evolution of cursorial adaptations seem to have limited the roles of the forepaws in both the subduing of prey and feeding.

Cheetah claws (except for the big retractable dewclaw) are sometimes said to be dog-like in shape. This here confirms that.

The claws and retractile mechanism of the cheetah differ from those of other felids in features in addition to those investigated in this study. Compared to those of other felids, the claws on digits 2-5 are straighter, thicker and more elongated, resembling those of canids (Gonyea & Ashworth, 1975). Gonyea & Ashworth (1975) reported that, although the cheetah has the large lateral dorsal elastic ligament between the middle and distal phalanges that is typical of felids, this species also has the pair of proximal dorsal elastic ligaments that characterize most non-felid carnivorans. The authors suggested that the former retracts the claw, whereas the latter provide additional support for the distal phalanx during terrestrial locomotion. The phylogenetic context in Fig. 10 suggests that, although the occurrence of a pair of dorsal elastic interphalangeal ligaments is probably plesiomorphic for the Carnivora, its occurrence in the cheetah is probably an autapomorphy relative to the absence of these ligaments in other extant felids.

[Infinity Blade]

Two studies on dietary preferences.

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8932225/

zslpublications.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1469-7998.2006.00184.x