Cheetah Facts
All About Cheetah Facts
Upon a slightly deeper dig into cheetah facts that were made available to me, I have determined that they may just be my favorite animal. Though he may wish to eat my horses, dog, and cats, I really think that I could make him happy. Of course I’m only joking, as cheetah facts clearly tell us that wild cats are best off right where they belong, and being admired from afar by the likes of me. I will share what I know, and we can be enamored together. Let’s get started, shall we?
The most common and well known cheetah facts have to do with his build, speed, and keen hunting abilities. He is such an efficient hunter that, in his wild African habitat, he is often jacked by prides of larger cats and stripped of his well earned meal. His rate of acceleration from a complete stand still position blows super cars out the water at 0 to 60 in about 2 seconds flat. At his flat out best, he can maintain speeds toppling seventy miles per hours for up to 35 seconds. At this speed, he shouldn’t need to hold out much longer than this. His most agile prey is capable of maximum speeds not to exceed 45 miles per hour, though fancy foot work can often get this frightened, potential meal out of a pinch. If the cheetah miscalculates or missteps even once at this speed, he is likely to saunter away tired and still hungry.
Cheetah facts involving their genetic makeup have made things very clear to the scientific community. It is true that all cheetahs are created equal, quite literally. Aside from a mutated color gene which gives the king cheetah his distinctly different coat markings, every cheetah from every region and every continent is genetically identical. Cheetah facts dealing with population failures and recoveries are quite scarred, as the African cheetah was all but obsolete by the beginning of the 1950’s. The vain, unsportsmanlike poaching of these fast, spotted cats saw populations drop from an estimated 200,000 in the 1800’s to vanished by 1953.
Mating and, even more important, survival of their cubs is a huge challenge for the cheetah. Facts compiled during the early 1970’s asserted that the male cheetah was deficient in not only his overall sperm count, but in the health of his viable seed. What these cheetah facts boil down to, in essence, is that only one in ten to twelve mating attempts will actually result in fertilization of the female. Of these viable pregnancies, only one in five ends up with a healthy family for mama to care for. These difficult statistics make the African cheetahs rebound to wild numbers toppling ten thousand even more encouraging.