Post by Tamrin on Sept 9, 2008 21:37:56 GMT 10
The cheetah is very fast. But it might not be able to outrun its own extinction.
Cheetahs of at least four different sub-species once roamed through North America, Asia, Europe and Africa. In fact, the name "cheetah" comes from the Hindi word meaning "the spotted one". But today the cheetah exists in sub-Saharan Africa as only one sub-species, with a tiny remnant population barely surviving in northern Iran.
We're not sure of the exact numbers, but we do know that cheetahs are endangered. In the mid-1950s, there were 20-40,000 cheetahs in the whole world. By the mid-1970s, their population had halved. How far they've dropped since then is anybody's guess.
The Sumerians, way back in 3,000 BC, were the first to use cheetahs as hunting companions. Since then, the pharaohs of Egypt, the kings of France, the princes of Persia, the Mongol emperors of India and the emperors of Austria have continued this tradition. When Marco Polo visited Kublai Khan at his summer residence in the Himalayan Mountains 700 years ago, he found that the mighty Khan kept 1,000 cheetahs to hunt deer and other slower animals.
Cheetahs are very inbred. They are so inbred, that genetically they are almost identical.
The current theory is that they became inbred when a "natural" disaster dropped their total world population down to less than seven individual cheetahs - probably about 10,000 years ago. They went through a "Genetic Bottleneck", and their genetic diversity plummeted. They survived only through brother-to-sister or parent-to-child mating.
Cheetahs of at least four different sub-species once roamed through North America, Asia, Europe and Africa. In fact, the name "cheetah" comes from the Hindi word meaning "the spotted one". But today the cheetah exists in sub-Saharan Africa as only one sub-species, with a tiny remnant population barely surviving in northern Iran.
We're not sure of the exact numbers, but we do know that cheetahs are endangered. In the mid-1950s, there were 20-40,000 cheetahs in the whole world. By the mid-1970s, their population had halved. How far they've dropped since then is anybody's guess.
The Sumerians, way back in 3,000 BC, were the first to use cheetahs as hunting companions. Since then, the pharaohs of Egypt, the kings of France, the princes of Persia, the Mongol emperors of India and the emperors of Austria have continued this tradition. When Marco Polo visited Kublai Khan at his summer residence in the Himalayan Mountains 700 years ago, he found that the mighty Khan kept 1,000 cheetahs to hunt deer and other slower animals.
Cheetahs are very inbred. They are so inbred, that genetically they are almost identical.
The current theory is that they became inbred when a "natural" disaster dropped their total world population down to less than seven individual cheetahs - probably about 10,000 years ago. They went through a "Genetic Bottleneck", and their genetic diversity plummeted. They survived only through brother-to-sister or parent-to-child mating.
The King Cheetah (note stripes), a rare genetic variation
