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The cheetah ( Acinonyx jubatus) is a large cat and the fastest land animal. It has a tawny to creamy white or pale buff fur that is marked with evenly spaced, solid black spots. The head is small and rounded, with a short snout and black tear-like facial streaks.
- What Is The Cheetah?
- Appearance and Habitat
- Speed and Hunting
- Social Structure and Reproduction
- Threats to Survival
- Conservation
The cheetah is the world's fastest land mammal. With acceleration that would leave most automobiles in the dust, a cheetah can go from zero to 60 miles an hour in only three seconds. Wild cheetahs are thought to be able to reach speeds of nearly 70 miles an hour—although they can only sustain that speed for about 30 seconds. These cats are nimble a...
Cheetahs are famous for their tawny coats covered in black spots, each arranged in a unique pattern to help the animals identify one another. Bold black stripes streak like tears from the inner corners of their eyes down to both sides of their mouths, and the ends of their bushy tails are encircled by black rings. As the only big cat with a semi-re...
Cheetahs’ bodies are uniquely adapted to help them reach top speeds, from their long, slender limbs and hard foot pads to the flexible spine that gives them their long stride. The cat’s light tail acts like a rudder, and its semi-retractable claws act like the spikes on a sprinter’s shoe to offer stability during the chase. Cheetahs also have large...
Unlike lions, cheetahs don’t live in groups. Female cheetahs live on their own, each with a large home range. Females in areas such as the Serengeti, where the prey is migratory, typically follow the herds. Meanwhile, males are either solitary or form small coalitions with one or two other males, typically their littermates. Some males establish sm...
Cheetah populations are under pressure as the open grasslands they favor are disappearing to human occupation and development. Given their solitary lives and the size of their home ranges, cheetahs need large areas of connected habitat—likely upwards of 3,800 square miles—to find mates and ultimately survive as a species. However, human settlements...
Cheetah conservation is particularly difficult given their wide geographic range—it requires large-scale, regional collaboration across countries. Hunting cheetahs is illegal in most of the countries where they can be found, as is owning them as pets. They’ve been protected from international commercial trade since 1975, under the Convention on Tra...
May 31, 2024 · Learn about cheetahs, the world's fastest sprinters, and their adaptations, behavior, and conservation status. Find out where cheetahs live, what they eat, how they hunt, and how they reproduce.
Aug 13, 2017 · Cheetahs 101 | Nat Geo Wild. Nat Geo WILD. 5.4M subscribers. Subscribed. 14K. 1.7M views 6 years ago. You may already know that cheetahs are the world's fastest land animal.
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Learn about the cheetah, the fastest mammal on land, and its unique adaptations, behavior, and conservation status. Find out how cheetahs hunt, live, and communicate with their distinctive spots and stripes.
Learn about the cheetah's wild life, physical characteristics, threats, and conservation efforts. Find out how the cheetah is the world's fastest land animal and Africa's most endangered big cat.
There are five subspecies of this big cat. It is slim and has muscular, long legs — in relation to its body size when compared to other cats — a small, rounded head that is set on a long neck, a flexible spine, a deep chest, special pads on its feet for traction, and a long tail for balance.
