Did you know that those two iconic long black lines on a cheetah’s face have a purpose? Or that these big cats are pretty good mothers? I bet you also didn’t know that some cheetahs eat melons! Those are just some of the interesting facts about cheetahs that you can look forward to if you stick around!
1. Cheetahs Are the Most Endangered Cats in Africa
Cheetah rolling in grass – Credit: Rachel Claire
Unfortunately, I need to start this list with a sad fact. It’s better to get it out of the way from the get-go, right?
Cheetahs, one of the incredible animals unique to Africa, are listed as the most endangered cats in Africa. The amazing animals of the Serengeti face threats like habitat loss, human conflict, and poaching. Thanks to this, their populations have taken a downward leap from 100,000 to 10,000 over the last 100 years. The Saharan cheetah’s population has also declined to less than 250 individuals thanks to limited prey, hunting, and habitat loss. Today, they only live in Algeria, Niger, the Sahara, and Sahel.
2. There Are Four Cheetah Subspecies
Back in 1975, it was a sure thing that five cheetah subspecies existed. Years later, in 2011, a phylogeographic study revealed that there’s only four. It turns out that two of the five subspecies, A. j. jubatus and A. j. raineyi, were so similar that they were considered the same thing, genetically, of course. The Cat Classification Task Force of the IUCN Cat Specialist Group confirmed this again in 2017 when they revised felid taxonomy.
The four remaining subspecies of cheetah are:
- Northwest African cheetah (A. j. hecki)
- Northeast African cheetah (A. j. soemmeringii)
- Asiatic cheetah (A. j. venaticus)
- Southeast African cheetah (A. j. jubatus), which was merged with the East African cheetah (A. j. raineyi).
Fortunately, none of them have gone extinct yet.
3. Cheetahs Are the Oldest Cats on Earth
This fact is a little wonky because it’s rather hard to tell exactly what happened four million years ago. However, as far as we know, cheetahs are the oldest of the big cats, which makes it even sadder that they’re threatened.
Apparently, emperors, pharaohs, and kings kept them as house pets as a sign of wealth and status. Sadly, things changed when their numbers started decreasing and they were reintroduced back into the wild. It was too difficult for them to breed in captivity, so there was no other way to keep the population growing.
4. Cheetahs Aren’t Aggressive
You probably wondered how so many individuals got to keep cheetahs as pets, right? That’s because unlike other big cats, they’re not aggressive towards humans. They actually make pretty great pets if you handle them from birth. That’s just one of the differences between cheetahs and leopards, lions, and tigers.
Not only are they docile, but they don’t consider us as prey. As a matter of fact, they’re not even aggressive towards other animals and they’d much rather flee than confront another living being. The only exception is the protectiveness of their females and territory that make male cheetahs aggressive towards other males.
5. Cheetahs Make Great Mothers
Cheetah mothers are dedicated, protective, careful, and considerate. They’re one of the best animal mothers and they even raise their cubs alone. They gradually teach them all of the necessary hunting skills themselves, like stalking prey. Cheetahs usually have 2 to 6 cubs per litter, and they won’t let any one of those babes out of their sight. They move around frequently to protect them from predators and avoid detection. Personally, the care and affection they show their babies is enough to melt my heart.
6. Cheetahs Can’t Roar
Cheetahs are one of the few big cats, together with the cougar and snow leopard, that can’t roar. Instead, they purr, chirp, howl, meow, trill, growl, and yell.
Their voice box structures are much different than those of other lions, leopards, jaguars, and tigers, who have an incompletely ossified hyoid bone. Their bones are ossified and fixed and they vibrate as they breathe, which is a similar structure to those of small cats. This is why big cats can’t purr, but small cats and cheetahs can.
7. Cheetahs Can Survive Without Water
I’m not saying that cheetahs don’t need water to live at all. What I’m saying is that they can go a pretty long time without drinking actual water. Kalahari cheetahs literally eat melons to stay hydrated. Yes, a cheetah chewing on a melon is indeed a strange sight. More carnivorous cheetahs get water from their prey, which includes anything from bunnies to wildebeest.
But can you guess how long cheetahs can go without stopping by the watering hole?
The answer is ten full days. That’s more than a week! 240 full hours! For some context: You and I can only survive without water for about three days.
8. Cheetahs Are the Fastest Animals on Land
Cheetahs may not be the fastest animal on Earth, but they’re definitely the fastest land animals. They’ve got some built-in cheats and mods that help them reach impeccable speeds, but we’ll get to that later.
It actually takes a cheetah just three seconds to reach a speed of 75 mph. I find that absolutely mind-blowing. Talk about a pull away! And could you imagine even attempting to run at that speed if you haven’t had a drop of water in ten days? But they can’t maintain that speed for too long before running out of fuel and slowing down. That’s why their closest contender, the pronghorn, can outrun them over long distances.
9. Cheetahs Are Built For Speed
Remember when I mentioned the cheetah’s useful little modifications? It turns out they’ve also got some that help them hunt, like:
Flexible spines: They’ve got loosely articulated vertebrae in their spines, which makes them very flexible. This helps them reach faster speeds and take longer leaps.
Flat tail: Cheetahs have long muscular tails that help them steer and take sharp turns as they zoom after a deer while keeping their balance. Many people compare it to the rudder on a boat.
Enlarged body parts: They’ve got longer legs for bigger leaps, bigger nostrils for more oxygen, and a larger heart and lungs.
Tear (malar) stripes: Those long black tears coming from their eyes actually have a purpose. They protect their eyes from the sun’s rays by absorbing the light and reducing the glare, while decreasing the contrast between light and dark areas.
10. Cheetahs Can’t Fully Retract Their Claws
You’d be surprised at how much something as small as nails can work in a cheetah’s favor. Most cats, even the small domestic ones, are able to fully retract their claws but once again, cheetahs are just built differently. They can only partially retract theirs, so their blunt and thick nails don’t go all the way back in. It’s another one of those useful adaptations that they’ve got that helps them gain extra traction while they cross every single speed limit.
