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Cheetahs

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There is scientific evidence to suggest that cheetahs were at some point of time reduced to only one breeding pair, which managed to reproduce and repopulate in their own little niche. It's been said that any two cheetahs are only as distantly related as cousins or something, but yet they manage to survive.

If they do manage to clone thylacines, they will most likely be gestated in tasmanian devils (one of the few other carnivorous marsupials around). Scientists can probably mix up the genetic contect of their DNA a bit, especially since they are taking DNA from several different thylacine specimens), so that they won't be too closely related. Or at least, that is the theory.

If they are successfully cloned, once their population size is up a bit and their life cycle has been studied etc., I would be interested to see if thylacines would be reintroduced into the environment. I mean, it would upset the ecology somewhat, but on the other hand it would mean the reintroduction of a natural predator which could help solve the problem of rabbits, foxes and other 'foreign' species to Australia.

Food for thought...
 
This relates to this thread, on the subject of this article expounding Lloyd Pye's ideas on evolution.

The essay makes the surprising claim that the cheetah is some kind of half-cat, half-dog hybrid beast:

"All examples of plant and animal “domestication” are incredible in their own right, but perhaps the most incredible is the cheetah. There is no question it was one of the first tamed animals, with a history stretching back to early Egypt, India, and China. As with all such examples, it could only have been created through selective breeding by Neolithic hunters, gatherers, or early farmers. One of those three must get the credit.

The cheetah is the most easily tamed and trained of all the big cats. No reports are on record of a cheetah killing a human. It seems specifically created for high speeds, with an aerodynamically designed head and body. Its skeleton is lighter than other big cats; its legs are long and slim, like the legs of a greyhound. Its heart, lungs, kidneys, and nasal passages are enlarged, allowing its breathing to jump from 60 per minute at rest to 150 bpm during a chase. Its top speed is 70 miles per hour while a thoroughbred tops out at around 38 mph. Nothing on a savanna can outrun it. It can be outlasted, but not outrun.

Cheetahs are unique because they combine physical traits of two distinctly different animal families: dogs and cats. They belong to the family of cats, but they look like long-legged dogs. They sit and hunt like dogs. They can only partially retract their claws, like dogs instead of cats. Their paws are thick and hard like dogs. They contract diseases that only dogs suffer from. The light-colored fur on their body is like the fur of a shorthaired dog. However, to climb trees they use the first claw on their front paws in the same way that cats do. In addition to their “dog only” diseases, they also get “cat only” ones. And the black spots on their bodies are, inexplicably, the texture of cat’s fur.

There is something even more inexplicable about cheetahs. Genetic tests have been done on them and the surprising result was that in the 50 specimens tested, they were all—every one—genetically identical with all the others! This means the skin or internal organs of any of the thousands of cheetahs in the world could be switched with the organs of any other cheetah and not be rejected. The only other place such physical homogeneity is seen is in rats and other animals that have been genetically altered in labs.

Cue the music from “The Twilight Zone”….

Cheetahs stand apart, of course, but all domesticated animals have traits that are not explainable in terms that stand up to rigorous scientific scrutiny. Rather than deal with the embarrassment of confronting such issues, scientists studiously ignore them and, as with the mysteries of domesticated plants, explain them away as best they can. For the cheetah, they insist it simply can not be some kind of weird genetic hybrid between cats and dogs, even though the evidence points squarely in that direction. And why? Because that, too, would move cheetahs into the forbidden zone occupied by You-Know-What.

The problem of the cheetahs’ genetic uniformity is explained by something now known as the “bottleneck effect.” What it presumes is that the wild cheetah population—which must have been as genetically diverse as its long history indicates—at some recent point in time went into a very steep population decline that left only a few breeding pairs alive. From that decimation until now they have all shared the same restricted gene pool. Unfortunately, there is no record of any extinction events that would selectively remove cheetahs and leave every other big cat to develop its expected genetic variation. So for as unlikely as it seems, the “bottleneck” theory is accepted as another scientific gospel."

Now, can anyone shed any light on all this? Is the cheetah really so special? Do most scientists think it was created by human selective breeding as a hunting animal, hence the genetic homogeneity? Indeed, is the species really genetically so genetically unvarying, as Pye claims with a suspicious dearth of reference? And most of all, are there any grounds at all for saying it's a cat-hound hybrid?
 
Without doing any research I would say this was mostly conjecture, for a start there are subspecies of cheetah ( some are still found in Saudi, far from any African cheetahs ) . And what about 'king' cheetahs , the cheetahs with different darker markings ? They could not possibly be genetically the same as the smaller spotted ones or they would look like them !
As for the physical differences , they are slightly evolved away from most cats , perhaps filling a dog niche where no canines lived ? They could not be a cat/dog hybrid , many cat species can interbreed but not animals as different as dogs and cats .
They were used in the past as hunting animals but probably because of their already present coursing abilities and ease of taming ( but not domestication - more like hunting with a hawk than a hound )

Remember just because something looks like something else , it doesn't mean it is related , thylacines looked like dogs but were marsupials , jaguarundis look like mustelids but are cats . It doesn't mean they are a cross , it is called parallel evolution .
 
I agree with Marion, plus, a vitally important distinction between dogs and cats is that dogs tend to be pack animals, while cats, with the exception of lions, are solitary. Cheetahs are not pack animals.

They breed poorly in captivity. This, together with a decreasing gene pool in the wild is one of the long term threats to the species. Even in protected habiatats, they tend to be out competed by other big cats. They're clearly very specialist organisms, which makes the 'bottleneck' seem credible to me.

As for the claim that all cheetahs are genetically identical, this is clearly nonsense, as if it were true there wouldn't be any cheetahs, as they'd all be either male or female!

Plus check out

http://www.cheetah.org/?html=dogs

and ask yourself if they'd be doing this if cheetahs and dogs were especially susceptible to cross-infection.
 
Another important distinction between cheetahs and dogs (and the big cats) is that cheetahs will not eat carrion. If their kill is too much for one meal its simply left for the scavengers. Most dogs will bury what they can't eat and come back to it later.
The non-retractable claws are obviously an evolutionary development related to their coursing ability, acting like cleats and allowing them to turn sharply at great speed.
It is already recognised that cheetahs have evolved separately from the other cats, hence the three main cat species - the big cats, the small cats and - cheetahs.
The Indian maharajas used native cheetahs for their hunting until they became extinct. They then began importing African cheetahs and so the numbers would have become severely depleted in Africa at some stage.
And remember that it isn't always easy to spot an animal's relatives by its appearance alone. Hyenas look like a type of dog but are more closely related to the mongoose.;) ;) ;)
 
Yeah the Cheetah's dogginess is all down to evolution to help it run fast. I've never heard of it getting dog diseases before so I'll have to look it up. The person writing that essay seems to not consider convergent evolution... a cat/dog hybrid beast is very very unlikely, as Carnivores are split into two groups, cat-like (Cats, hyaenas, mongooses, genets) and dog-like (dogs, bears, weasels, badgers, racoons). And the Cheetah isn't really dog-like at all, it just has certain traits that look dog-like.

The genetic similarity thing also sounds suspect. Like Marion says, the King Cheetah seems to disprove this. And as for the theory that its a selected breeding thing, that also seems bobbins. I don't know of any selectively bred domestic animal that has created anything beyond a seperate species. The Cheetah isn't just a seperate species, but a seperate genus and subfamily. That's a hell of a lot of selective breeding.

The essay seems pseudo-scientific pap to me.

One bit that is right, however is the Cheetah's non-dangerous nature. From Caras, R.A. (1975) Dangerous to Man, Barrie & Jenkins, London (p23):

For all its flash and speed, this handsome animal is not dangerous to man except under the most unusual and accidental circumstances. Unprovoked attacks on man are, as far as can be discerned, unknown. Even provoked attacks have been extremely rare and seldom, if ever, fatal.
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Thinking about the Cheetah's non-threatening nature naturally made me consider how cool it would be to have one as a pet! Which led me to wonder, given that at least some ABC's are escaped/released animals, why are they 'pumas' or 'panthers' rather than Cheetahs? If you really wanted a big cat to show off, wouldn't you go for the placid Cheetah rather than its less predictable cousins? Is it a fashion thing? Are Cheetahs harder to get?
 
Cheetahs are much rarer than leopards (panthers) and pumas, which are relatively common, athough the Red List (official book of endangered animals) lists the Leopard as Threatened, which means some of its subspecies are in danger while others aren't.

The Asiatic subspecies of cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus venaticus ) is classed as endangered in the Red List, while the African Cheetah (A. j. jubatus) is not threatened at all. Incidentally, the fact there's two subspecies of Cheetah suggests the idea all Cheetahs are genetically identical is a load of bunkum. However:

The Asiatic form in reputedly smaller (although such evidence as exists on this point is inconclusive), its fur is thinner and it is said to lack a mane. The characteristics on which the two races are seperated are so minor and based on such inadequate comparative material from the Asiatic sector of the range that it is questionable whether seperation is justified.
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[Simon, N, (1993), Nature in Danger, Guinness, Middlesex, p175]

This bit also seems to disprove the fact that the cheetah doesn't attack people because it's in some way domesticated:

The cheetah is of a nervous, timid disposition, unable to tolerate disturbance, and quickly disappears from areas actively exploited by people.
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[Ibid., p176]
 
This may be a little off the thread, but does anyone else remember Scrap the cheetah from many years ago at Edinburgh Zoo? He'd be dead by now, I imagine, but he was certainly as tame as any dog. One of my early memories is of being held up to the fence of his pen (he wasn't even kept in a cage) to call Scrap, who came scampering up, stood on his hind paws and licked my face through the fence! I used to have a newspaper clipping with a picture of the director of the zoo with Scrap on a leash going for their daily walk. I never heard of anyone having a bad experience with him, although sadly I couldn't imagine any of it happening in today's litigation-mad world.
 
wintermute said:
Thinking about the Cheetah's non-threatening nature naturally made me consider how cool it would be to have one as a pet!
Click to expand...

My grandfather, a dapper Eurasian gentleman, who owned a number of tea estates on the Bengal/Nepal borders, had a pet female Cheetah who sported a diamond collar and slept at the foot of his bed.

My grandmother wasn't terribly happy with this state of affairs but my grandpa and the Cheetah were inseperable for a good decade or so, after which my grandparents upped sticks and moved to London, leaving the Cheetah in the care of a zoo, where she was successfully integrated into a breeding programme.
 
Apparently all Golden Hamsters are descended from 3 individuals captured in Syria in 1930 (Shuker, "The Lost Ark"). It would be difficult to imagine a group of animals more inbred, yet I don't think they suffer any particular defects. On the other hand, cheetahs have low genetic diversity due to a "population bottleneck" at some point in their history, and I believe this has caused some problems, such as low fertility.
Anyone know any more about this?
 
I think that in general inbreeding is a bad thing. Cheetahs are hugely inbred and appear to have gone down to a tiny population sometime in the recent evolutionary past. I heard that this was due to the fact that they occupy a tiny and therefore precarious niche, a bit like giant Pandas.
 
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http://abc.net.au/science/news/ancient/ ... 433588.htm
Sabertooth tigers were no pussy cats
Reuters
Tuesday, 9 August 2005

Ancient DNA has rewritten the big-cat family tree of sabertooth tigers, pumas and cheetahs ...

And they also shot down a theory that cheetahs may have originally evolved from a similar-looking North American ancestor.

Sabertoothed cats went extinct about 13,000 years ago, towards the end of the last Ice Age, as did many other large cats that once roamed the North American plains.

These include the Yukon scimitartoothed cat, the American lion-like cat or Panthera atrox and a cheetah-like cat called Miracinonyx trumani. ...

The researchers, which include Professor Alan Cooper from Australia's University of Adelaide, managed to get some DNA from a sabertooth's bones, a bit from a related Yukon scimitartoothed cat and a sample from Miracinonyx bones found in Wyoming.

Their analysis shows that the sabertooth cats diverged early on from the ancestors of modern cats and are not closely related to any living feline species.

And the cat that resembled an early cheetah was not in fact a cheetah but a relative of the modern-day puma.

"Despite its remarkable morphological similarity to the African cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus), Miracinonyx appears to have evolved from a puma-like ancestor, presumably in response to similar ecological pressures," the researchers write. ...

In other words, it chased antelope on the rolling plains of the American Midwest just as modern cheetahs do in the African savannah.

"It has been suggested that the cheetahs originated in the New World and later migrated to the Old World," the researchers write.

"However, the mitochondrial sequence analysis together with recent fossil data suggests that they originated in the Old World and that a puma-like cat then invaded North America around six million years ago.

"Around 3.2 million years ago, this ancestor diverged into Miracinonyx and Puma, which is broadly contemporaneous with increasing prairie in North America." ...
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Cheetahs facing extinction amid dramatic decline in numbers
Telegraph Reporters
27 December 2016 • 7:54am

Urgent action is needed to stop the cheetah - the world's fastest land animal - sprinting to extinction, experts have warned.
Scientists estimate that just 7,100 of the fleet-footed cats remain in the wild, occupying just 9% of the territory they once lived in.

Asiatic populations have been hit the hardest with fewer than 50 individuals surviving in Iran, according to a new investigation led by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) and Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS).
In Zimbabwe, cheetah numbers have plummeted by 85% in little more than a decade.

The cheetah's dramatic decline has now prompted calls for the animal's status to be upgraded from "vulnerable" to "endangered" on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of threatened species.

Dr Sarah Durant, from ZSL and WCS, project leader for the Rangewide Conservation Programme for Cheetah and African Wild Dog, said: "This study represents the most comprehensive analysis of cheetah status to date.
"Given the secretive nature of this elusive cat, it has been difficult to gather hard information on the species, leading to its plight being overlooked. Our findings show that the large space requirements for cheetah, coupled with the complex range of threats faced by the species in the wild, mean that it is likely to be much more vulnerable to extinction than was previously thought."

The cheetah is one of the world's most wide-ranging carnivores and needs a lot of space. Partly because of this, 77% of its remaining habitat falls outside protected areas, leaving the animal especially vulnerable to human impacts.
Even within well-managed parks and reserves the cats have suffered as a result of humans hunting their prey, habitat loss, illegal trafficking of cheetah parts, and the exotic pet trade, say the researchers writing in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

In Zimbabwe these pressures have seen the cheetah population plunge from 1,200 to a maximum of only 170 animals in 16 years, a decline of 85 per cent.

The experts want to see a completely new approach to cheetah conservation focusing on the landscape that transcends national borders and incorporates co-ordinated regional strategies.
It would involve motivating both governments and local communities to protect the cheetah and promoting the sustainable co-existence of humans and wildlife.

Dr Kim Young-Overton, from the wild cat conservation organisation Panthera, said: "We've just hit the reset button in our understanding of how close cheetahs are to extinction.

"The take-away from this pinnacle study is that securing protected areas alone is not enough. We must think bigger, conserving across the mosaic of protected and unprotected landscapes that these far-reaching cats inhabit, If we are to avert the otherwise certain loss of the cheetah forever."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/12/27/cheetahs-facing-extinction-amid-dramatic-decline-numbers/
 
Big Cat Bars.

Specific trees and large rocks in Africa are like bars for male cheetahs, new research reveals.

The big cats use these places to find mates and send signals to other males, effectively making them communication hubs for their species. They may also be key to saving the animals from angry farmers, the study suggests.

“Hats off to them!” Tim Caro, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Bristol, says of the researchers’ work. The study shows the importance of understanding the behavior of wild animals before making conservation management decisions, he notes.

Caro’s earlier research served as a starting point for the cheetah study. In the 1980s, he discovered that the big cats have a unique social system among mammals: Solitary females range over huge areas that encompass the smaller territories held by males. Competition among males for their domains is fierce, and they often form coalitions with one or two unrelated males to defend their land. Males without territories (called floaters) roam around looking to take over one of these holdings.

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/202...knowing-these-locales-could-help-save-species
 
As it turns out, cheetahs are strong swimmers. This doesn't mean they like water any more than other cats ...

CheetahSwim.jpg
Cheetahs battle raging river in stunning photo. Did they survive?

A stunning photo captures a group of cheetahs, the world's fastest land sprinters, struggling to swim through a raging river in Kenya.

The group of male cheetahs was fording the Talek River in the Maasai Mara National Reserve in an effort to access better hunting grounds. The striking photo is one of the highly commended entries in the 2021 Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition.

Buddhilini de Soyza, an investment banker and amateur photographer, took the photo on a trip to Kenya in January 2020 ..., after spending several hours watching the cheetahs pace up and down the river bank. Suddenly, the lead cheetah jumped into the water, and the rest followed.

"I just couldn't believe my eyes," de Soyza told Live Science. "I don't actually remember clicking [the photo]. I obviously did because I've got a good 50, 60 shots of them crossing. All I do remember shouting is, 'Oh my god what are they going to do? They're going to die!'" ...

Cheetahs (Acinonyx jubatus) are strong swimmers, but like many cats can be hesitant around water. The river in the photo was rough following heavy rain and flooding, but the cheetahs needed to cross it to reach the larger side of their territory, which had more prey, according to de Soyza. She took the photo as the cheetahs hit the most turbulent part of the river. ...

The river’s current dragged the cheetahs about 330 feet (100 meters) downstream, but they successfully made it across. ...
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FULL STORY: https://www.livescience.com/cheetahs-battle-river-wildlife-photo.html
 
JaneD said:
I think they are my favourite big cat. There was talk of reintroducing cheetahs into India but that doesn’t seem to be going anywhere https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-57313563. I think any effort to give them more places to survive has got to be a good thing as things are looking a bit bleak for them.
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I've never thought about what my favourite cat is, but I don't think there's anything in the world more adorable than a cheetah cub.
 
Here's a pro tip. If you're ever attacked by a cheetah, grab its tail at the bum end and hang on.
Cheetahs are like a cross between dog and cat - like a dog, they can't reach round and bite you if you're hanging on to their tail.
 
Herr Cloaca said:
Here's a pro tip. If you're ever attacked by a cheetah, grab its tail at the bum end and hang on.
Cheetahs are like a cross between dog and cat - like a dog, they can't reach round and bite you if you're hanging on to their tail.
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I've always assumed, should a cheetah attack me, it'll most likely be assaulting me with its front end.
 
Herr Cloaca said:
Here's a pro tip. If you're ever attacked by a cheetah, grab its tail at the bum end and hang on.
Cheetahs are like a cross between dog and cat - like a dog, they can't reach round and bite you if you're hanging on to their tail.
Click to expand...
I'd pay money to watch you do that.
 
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