Cheetah

• 1. Introduction

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  In under three seconds, a cheetah can accelerate from a standstill to 97 kilometres per hour. The animal is Acinonyx jubatus, the only living member of its genus and the fastest land animal on Earth. Yet in 2021 the global population was estimated at just 6,517 individuals, and the species is listed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List. This documentary asks what kind of body makes such acceleration possible. It asks why unrelated cheetahs are so alike genetically that skin grafts between them heal as if they came from a single animal. And it asks how a cat once kept by royalty in Egypt, Arabia and India came to lose most of its former range.

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• 2. Names and Kin

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  The word cheetah comes from Hindustani, where the term ćītā grows out of a root meaning variegated, adorned or painted. For a long time English speakers preferred another label, the hunting leopard, because the animal could be tamed and used for coursing. That habit caused real trouble for naturalists, who often confused the cheetah with the leopard. Some even treated hunting leopards as a separate species.

  The scientific name hides its own small puzzle. Acinonyx probably blends two Greek words meaning unmoved and nail or hoof, which roughly translates as immobile nails. It is a nod to the cheetah's limited ability to retract its claws. The species name jubatus is Latin for crested or having a mane.

  In 1777, Johann Christian Daniel von Schreber described the cheetah from a skin collected at the Cape of Good Hope. He called it Felis jubatus. Joshua Brookes supplied the genus name Acinonyx in 1828. In 1917, Reginald Innes Pocock gave the cheetah a subfamily of its own, Acinonychinae, citing its striking resemblance to the greyhound. Later revisions moved it back into Felinae. Along the way, Philip Sclater proposed in 1877 that a South African specimen with unusually dense fur was a separate species, Felis lanea. It became known as the woolly cheetah, though most authorities disputed the claim.

  The count of subspecies has shifted too. In 1975, five were considered valid. A phylogeographic study in 2011 found minimal genetic variation between two of them, and in 2017 the Cat Classification Task Force of the IUCN Cat Specialist Group recognised four. The Asiatic cheetah survives only in central Iran, where just 12 individuals were estimated to remain as of 2022. The northwest African subspecies is listed as critically endangered. The southeast African cheetah is far more numerous, with nearly 4,000 animals sparsely spread across Angola, Botswana, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa and Zambia as of 2016.

  The cheetah's closest living relatives are the cougar and the jaguarundi, and the three form what biologists call the Puma lineage. Fossil cousins fill in the picture. The giant cheetah, Acinonyx pardinensis, was significantly larger and slower than the modern animal. A smaller species, Acinonyx intermedius, ranged from Europe to China. In North America, extinct cheetah-like cats led the palaeontologist Daniel Adams to propose the group Miracinonyx in 1979. Later research placed Miracinonyx closer to the cougar than to the cheetah, so the resemblance is credited to parallel evolution. Cheetah-like cats are known from the Old World as late as 10,000 years ago.

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• 3. Built for Speed

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  A cheetah's thigh muscles weigh 50 percent more than expected for a four-legged mammal of the same body mass. Those of a lion or tiger come close to the predicted figure. In the hindlimbs, 50.1 percent of the muscle fibres are the fast type IIx, against 40 percent in the neck and trunk and 36 percent in the forelimbs. Large Betz cells in the motor cortex, unusually big for its brain mass, would help drive those heavy muscles. There is a cost. Mitochondria make up only 3.7 percent of the volume of its muscle fibres, compared with 6.5-10.7 percent in dogs and ponies.

  The spine works like a spring. Before the feet strike the ground in the airborne phases of a gallop, the back flexes. A flexed cheetah trunk is just 67 percent as long as an extended one, while a horse manages 80-90 percent. The lumbar region is the longest of any carnivore, accounting for half of the combined thoracic and lumbar spine. Spinal movement alone can add as much as 76 cm to a stride.

  One stride of a galloping cheetah measures 4 to 7 m, and the animal may take 4 strides per second. For more than half of a sprint, all four limbs are in the air. The tail is not a counterbalance, as many people assume. It makes up only 2 percent of body mass. Its thick fur increases the effective area by 40 percent, so it acts as a rudder, swinging through angles of 90 degrees.

  The head is built for lightness. The triangular skull has narrow bones and a poorly developed sagittal crest, and the mouth cannot open as wide as in other cats. The cheetah has the largest frontal sinuses among felids, which may help cool the air it breathes. A few cheetahs measured after hunts averaged 38.6 C, so intense effort does not appear to cause overheating. The claws are blunt, but the large dewclaw is sharp. Of its 30 teeth, the canines deliver the highest bite force among felids when skulls are scaled to the same size, at 689 Newtons.

  The popular figure of 114 km/h has been discredited because of a faulty measuring method. The highest reliably reported speed is 104 km/h, or 65 mph. An 11-year-old cheetah at the Cincinnati Zoo reached 98 km/h. Wild cheetahs wearing GPS collars did not run that fast. Their average top speed during hunts was 54 km/h, and the highest recorded was 93 km/h. For comparison, a polo horse needs 3.6 seconds to reach just 36 km/h. Even so, a cheetah can overtake a pronghorn that starts with a 137 m lead. It saves its top speed for closing a straight-line gap, then runs more slowly through the prey's zigzags.

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• 4. Spots and Sameness

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  A cheetah's coat carries around 2,000 solid black spots, each roughly 3-5 cm across. No two animals share a pattern, so researchers can use the spots to tell individuals apart. Black tear-like streaks run from the corners of the eyes down the nose to the mouth, a feature unique to the cheetah. Their purpose is not well understood. They may shield the eyes from glare or sharpen facial expressions at close range. A leopard has rosettes instead of spots and no tear streaks, and a serval's spots fuse into stripes along the back.

  Beneath the pattern lies a stranger fact. The cheetah has 38 chromosomes, the same as most felids, but it was the first felid found to have unusually low genetic variability. The consequences include poor breeding in captivity, defective sperm, high juvenile mortality and vulnerability to disease. In 1983, a deadly feline coronavirus outbreak struck the cheetah breeding facility at Wildlife Safari in Winston, Oregon. It killed 60 percent of the animals, a higher death rate than any earlier outbreak of that disease in any felid.

  Skin grafts reveal how deep the sameness runs. Normally a graft swapped between unrelated individuals is rejected unless their immune genes are highly uniform. Between unrelated cheetahs, grafts are accepted and heal. Overall genetic variation is only 0.1-4 percent of the average for living species. That is lower than in Tasmanian devils, Virunga gorillas and Amur tigers, and even lower than in highly inbred domestic cats and dogs. Scientists blame two population bottlenecks, one about 100,000 years ago and one 10,000-12,000 years ago.

  One rare variety has a long tangled history of its own. The king cheetah has cream-coloured fur with large blotchy spots and three wide dark stripes from neck to tail. In Manicaland, Zimbabwe, people called it nsuifisi and believed it was a cross between a leopard and a hyena. In 1926, Major A. Cooper wrote about one he had shot near modern Harare, suggesting a leopard-cheetah cross. In 1927, Pocock named it a new species, Acinonyx rex. Lacking proof, he withdrew the proposal in 1939.

  In 1981, two female cheetahs at the De Wildt Cheetah and Wildlife Centre in South Africa each gave birth to a king cheetah after mating with a wild male from Transvaal. In 2012, researchers traced the pattern to a mutation in the gene Taqpep. It is the same gene behind the striped versus blotchy coats of tabby cats. If two carriers mate, about a quarter of their offspring can be expected to be king cheetahs.

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• 5. The Chase

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  A cheetah chase lasts 37.9 seconds on average. In a 2013 study, chases averaged 173 m, and the longest run measured 559 m. Before the sprint comes patience. The cat watches from a resting site or a low branch, then either walks to within 60-70 m in the open or stalks through cover to within 30 m. Where cover is scarce, it may start from 200 m away. A stalking cheetah crouches with its head below its shoulders, moving slowly and freezing at times. If it is spotted early, it can give up.

  The dewclaw delivers the decisive blow. In full pursuit, the cheetah hooks the prey's limb or rump, upsetting its balance and bringing it down. A fall at that speed can break the prey's limbs. To kill large prey, the cheetah clamps its jaws on the throat and holds for 5 minutes, until the struggle stops. A bite to the nape or skull is enough for small animals. Overall, the hunt succeeds 25-40 percent of the time. Against Thomson's gazelles in the Serengeti, the success rate is 70 percent, compared with 57 percent for African wild dogs, 33 percent for spotted hyenas and 26 percent for lions.

  Impala are the staple in the woodlands of eastern and southern Africa, and springbok in the arid savannas to the south. Dama and Dorcas gazelles feed cheetahs in the Sahara. Most prey weighs under 40 kg, and animals on the edge of a herd are common targets. Vigilant animals that react quickly are usually skipped. At Phinda Game Reserve, researchers found that nyala, whose males weigh around 120 kg, were the major prey.

  When there is no cover, a cheetah drags its kill an average of 64.5 m. One individual dragged a kill for 712 m. The hunter then rests beside the carcass, panting for 20-30 minutes. A cheetah at Etosha National Park in Namibia was found to eat as much as 10 kg in two hours, though the daily average is around 4 kg. It tears flesh with its blade-like carnassial teeth by moving its head from side to side, and swallows without chewing.

  That hurry has a reason. Cheetahs lose 9-14 percent of their kills to larger predators, and in the Serengeti about 4 percent go to spotted hyenas. Unlike African wild dogs, cheetahs could cope with losing 25 percent of kills by spending only 4 hours a day hunting. They are active mainly by day, while lions and hyenas are active mainly at night. In the Sahara, where daytime heat can reach 43 °C, cheetahs hunt after sunset. In Iran's Bafq Protected Area, they avoided leopards by moving to lower elevations. In north-central Namibia, cheetahs and leopards share 34 percent of scent-marking sites by visiting at different times. In one recorded case, a black-backed jackal even distracted prey so that a cheetah could catch it.

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• 6. Coalitions and Cubs

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  In the Serengeti, 30 percent of the males in coalitions are not related to their groupmates. Most coalitions are brothers from one litter who stayed together after weaning, but outsiders are admitted, though newcomers may meet some aversion at first. Members groom one another, call out if one goes missing and share equal access to kills. In the Kalahari Desert, around 40 percent of males live alone. A 1987 study found that solitary and grouped males were equally likely to come across females. Even so, coalition males were notably healthier and survived better. Females, by contrast, are not social. They live alone or with cubs in undefended ranges, though mothers and offspring or siblings may rest side by side.

  In central Namibia, where prey is thinly scattered, female home ranges cover 554-7063 km2. At Phinda Game Reserve they span only 34-157 km2. Males settle into territories only where females stay put, which happens where prey is plentiful. In Kruger National Park, a coalition of three males held 126 km2, while one solitary male held 195 km2. Some males, called floaters, switch between territory and nomadism depending on where the females are.

  A chirp is a bird-like stutter-bark lasting less than a second. Cheetahs chirp when excited around a kill, and mothers use it to summon hidden cubs. A louder yelp can be heard from up to 2 km away. The purr is like a domestic cat's but much louder, and it works as a greeting. Mothers say "ihn ihn" to gather cubs and "prr prr" to guide them on a journey. Scent matters as well. Males spray urine on trees, stumps and rocks, and other cheetahs sniff and repeat the ritual. In Botswana, ranchers set traps at these traditional marking spots, and the calls of a trapped cheetah can draw more cats to the place.

  After a gestation of nearly three months, a female usually gives birth to three or four cubs, though litters of six to eight occur. Cubs born in the wild weigh 150-300 g. Their napes and backs are covered in long bluish-grey hair that gives them a mohawk look. One study suggests this mantle makes a cub resemble a honey badger, an animal many predators avoid. Mothers hide cubs in dense vegetation for the first two months and move them every five to six days. Even so, predators cause 58.3 percent of cub deaths in the Serengeti and 88.9 percent in Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park.

  To teach hunting, a mother catches live prey and lets it go in front of her cubs. Cubs as young as six months try for small prey such as hares, but they may wait until 15 months for a successful solo kill. Offspring become independent at around 20 months. Females stay close to their mothers, and males move farther off. A 2007 study found that females who bore more litters early in life often died younger. Wild females live 14 to 15 years, and males generally live as long as ten.

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• 7. Royal Companions

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  The earliest known depictions of the cheetah are in the Chauvet Cave in France, dating to 32,000-26,000 BC. Where humans first tamed the animal is still debated. Historians Heinz Friederichs and Burchard Brentjes pointed to Sumer, citing a seal from about 3000 BC showing a long-legged leashed animal. Thomas Allsen argues that the animal might be a large dog. Frederick Zeuner and others favoured ancient Egypt, where the evidence is stronger. The goddess Mafdet, worshipped during the First Dynasty, was sometimes shown as a cheetah, and Egyptians believed cheetahs carried away the spirits of dead pharaohs. In the New Kingdom, cheetahs were common royal pets, adorned with ornate collars and leashes.

  Hunting cheetahs appear in pre-Islamic Arabic art from Yemen, and the practice grew more common toward the seventh century AD. In the Middle East, a cheetah rode to the hunt in a special seat on the back of the saddle of a noble. Taming was elaborate and could take a year. The Romans may have called the cheetah leopardos or leontopardos, believing it a hybrid of leopard and lion. A 4th-century mosaic from Lod, Israel, shows a Roman hunting cheetah.

  In eastern Asia, records are confusing because the names for leopard and cheetah were used interchangeably. Paintings from the Tang dynasty show tethered cheetahs and cheetahs mounted on horses, and Chinese emperors used them as gifts. Tomb figurines from the reign of Kublai Khan, from 1260 to 1294 AD, also show cheetahs on horseback. The Mughal ruler Akbar the Great is said to have kept as many as 1000 imperial cheetahs. His son Jahangir wrote in his memoirs that only one of them gave birth. The rampant hunting took such a toll on India's wild animals that by 1927 cheetahs had to be imported from Africa.

  Artists took notice. In Bacchus and Ariadne, the 16th-century painter Titian shows the chariot of Dionysus drawn by two cheetahs, which were long mistaken for leopards. In 1764, George Stubbs painted Cheetah with Two Indian Attendants and a Stag. It commemorates a cheetah gifted to King George III by Sir George Pigot, the English Governor of Madras.

  The first cheetah in a zoo arrived at the Zoological Society of London in 1829. Early captives lived an average of only 3-4 years. After CITES enforcement limited the wild trade in 1975, more effort went into captive breeding, and by 2014 an estimated 1730 captive cheetahs were mostly born in zoos. Yet 23 percent of captive cheetahs died before their first birthday in 2014, and they are especially prone to stress-induced disease. In the Serengeti, females breed successfully 95 percent of the time, compared with 20 percent in one study of North American captives. In November 2017, a cheetah at the Saint Louis Zoo gave birth to eight cubs, a record for the Association of Zoos and Aquariums.

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• 8. Vanishing Range

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  The last three wild cheetahs in India were killed in 1947 by Maharaja Ramanuj Pratap Singh of Surguja. The last confirmed sighting was a cheetah that drowned in a well near Hyderabad in 1957. Elsewhere the retreat was just as steep. The cheetah once ranged from the Arabian Peninsula to the Indian subcontinent and north to the Aral and Caspian Seas. Iran held around 400 cheetahs before World War II. Conservation in the 1950s steadied them, but prey declined again after the revolution of 1979 and the Iran-Iraq War. In Africa, Norman Myers conducted the first survey of Sub-Saharan Africa in 1975 and estimated 15,000 cheetahs. As of 2017, cheetahs occurred in just nine percent of their former African range, mostly on unprotected land.

  That last fact sits at the heart of the threats. Seventy-six percent of the cheetah's range is unprotected, and farmers and herders target it to protect livestock, especially in Namibia. Commercial agriculture and industry fragment its habitat, and woody plant encroachment adds to the damage in southern Africa. Wildlife trafficking is a problem in places such as Ethiopia. Roadkill has been recorded in Iran, including at Touran National Park and Bafq. Because the cheetah needs a large area and lives at low density, it seems less able than the leopard to coexist with people.

  The response began in South Africa, where the De Wildt Cheetah and Wildlife Centre opened in 1971 to care for cheetahs trapped or injured by Namibian farmers. The Cheetah Conservation Fund was founded in Namibia in 1990, and it runs the only cheetah genetics laboratory of its kind, in Otjiwarongo. Its Bushblok initiative restores habitat through targeted bush thinning. In 2007, the IUCN Cat and Canid Specialist Groups, the Wildlife Conservation Society and the Zoological Society of London began the Range Wide Conservation Program for Cheetah and African Wild Dogs. In 2014, the CITES Standing Committee named the cheetah a species of priority in its strategy against trafficking in northeastern Africa. Malawi reintroduced the cheetah in 2017. Iran declared the 31st of August National Cheetah Day in 2006.

  India's attempt to bring the cheetah back has been the most ambitious and contested. Scientists in Hyderabad proposed cloning Asiatic cheetahs from Iran in the early 2000s, but Iran refused. In 2009, the Minister of Environment and Forests asked the Wildlife Trust of India and the Wildlife Institute of India to examine importing African cheetahs. The Supreme Court of India stalled the plan in May 2012 over a political dispute and concerns about introducing a non-native species. On the 28th of January 2020, the court allowed an experimental introduction. Eight cheetahs from Namibia were released into Kuno National Park on the 17th of September 2022. They have since produced 17 cubs. By September 2024, however, eight adults and four cubs had already died.

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