The cheetah population is declining rapidly and faces a high risk of extinction. A recent study found there are only about 7,100 cheetahs remaining in the wild, representing a 53% decline over the last 15 years. Cheetahs have lost significant habitat to agriculture and livestock grazing, and they are sometimes killed by humans who see them as a threat to livestock, even though cheetahs rarely prey on domestic animals. Unless immediate conservation efforts are taken, the world's fastest land animal could soon disappear.
The cheetah population is declining rapidly and faces a high risk of extinction. A recent study found there are only about 7,100 cheetahs remaining in the wild, representing a 53% decline over the last 15 years. Cheetahs have lost significant habitat to agriculture and livestock grazing, and they are sometimes killed by humans who see them as a threat to livestock, even though cheetahs rarely prey on domestic animals. Unless immediate conservation efforts are taken, the world's fastest land animal could soon disappear.
The cheetah population is declining rapidly and faces a high risk of extinction. A recent study found there are only about 7,100 cheetahs remaining in the wild, representing a 53% decline over the last 15 years. Cheetahs have lost significant habitat to agriculture and livestock grazing, and they are sometimes killed by humans who see them as a threat to livestock, even though cheetahs rarely prey on domestic animals. Unless immediate conservation efforts are taken, the world's fastest land animal could soon disappear.
The cheetah population is declining rapidly and faces a high risk of extinction. A recent study found there are only about 7,100 cheetahs remaining in the wild, representing a 53% decline over the last 15 years. Cheetahs have lost significant habitat to agriculture and livestock grazing, and they are sometimes killed by humans who see them as a threat to livestock, even though cheetahs rarely prey on domestic animals. Unless immediate conservation efforts are taken, the world's fastest land animal could soon disappear.
The Cheetah is a large cat of the subfamily felinae, it’s from Nort, Southern and East Africa, and few localities in iran. In habitats a variety of mostly arid habitats like dry forests, scrub forests and savannahs.
The cheetah was formally described by Johann Christian Daniel von Schreber in 1775 and is the only extant member of the genus Acinonyx. Its yellowish tan or rufous to greyish white coat is uniformly covered with nearly 2,000 solid black spots. Its body is slender with a small rounded head, black tear-like streaks on the face, deep chest, long thin legs and long spotted tail. It reaches 70–90 cm (28–35 in) at the shoulder, and weighs 21–72 kg (46–159 lb).
The cheetah breeds throughout the year, and is an induced ovulator. Gestation lasts nearly three months, resulting in a litter of typically three to five, in rare cases up to eight cubs. They are weaned at the age of about six months. After siblings become independent from their mother, they usually stay together for some time. It is active mainly during the day, with hunting its major activity. It is a carnivore and preys mainly upon antelopes. It stalks its prey to within 100–300 m (330–980 ft), charge towards it and kill it by tripping it during the chase and biting its throat to suffocate it to death. Female cheetahs are solitary or live with their offspring in home ranges. Adult males are sociable despite their territoriality, forming groups called coalitions.
African cheetahs may achieve successful hunts only running up to a speed of 64 km/h (40 mph) while hunting due to their exceptional ability to accelerate; but are capable of accelerating up to 112 km/h (70 mph) on short distances of 100 m (330 ft). It is therefore the fastest land animal. Because of its prowess at hunting, the cheetah has been tamed already in the 16th century BC in Egypt and used to kill game at hunts. It has been widely depicted in art, literature, advertising and animation.
The cheetah's closest relatives are the cougar (Puma concolor) and the jaguarundi (Herpailurus yagouaroundi). These three species together form the Puma lineage, one of the eight lineages of Felidae.The sister group of the Puma lineage is a clade of smaller Old World cats that includes the genera Felis, Otocolobus and Prionailurus Although the cheetah is an Old World cat, molecular evidence indicates that the three species of the Puma lineage evolved in North America two to three million years ago, where they possibly had a common ancestor during the Miocene.They possibly diverged from this ancestor 8.25 million years ago. The cheetah diverged from the puma and the jaguarundi around 6.7 million years ago. A genome study suggests that cheetahs experienced two genetic bottlenecks in their history, the first about 100,000 years ago and the second about 12,000 years ago, greatly lowering their genetic variability. These bottlenecks may have been associated with migrations across Asia and into Africa (with the current African population founded about 12,000 years ago), and/or with a depletion of prey species at the end of the Pleistocene.
Danger of extinction
The world’s fastest land mammal is racing toward extinction, with the latest cheetah census suggesting that the big cats, which are already few in number, may decline by an additional 53 percent over the next 15 years.
“That’s really perilous,” says Luke Hunter, president and CCO for Panthera, the global wild cat conservation organization. “That’s a very active decline, and you have to really step in and act to address that.”
Today there are just 7,100 cheetahs left in the wild, according to the new study, which appears this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. That’s down from an estimated 14,000 cheetahs in 1975, when researchers made the last comprehensive count of the animals across the African continent
humans are the main reason that cheetahs are in peril.
Like other large carnivores, cheetahs face habitat loss driven by conversion of wilderness areas into managed land dedicated to agriculture or livestock. People will then sometimes kill cheetahs if they perceive the animals as a threat to their livestock, even though cheetahs rarely take domesticated animals, Hunter says.
