King Cheetah
Who Is This King Cheetah, And Where Did He Come From?
Well, until the early 1980’s, this was a question made of fairy dust and children’s dreams. The king cheetah had been rumored, and a few very sketchy images of him had been captured, but nobody seemed to be able to get close to this magnificent specimen. If you were to consider what little is left of the cheetah family then I guess this wouldn’t be much of a shock to you either. The numbers of wild cheetahs in Asian regions has dwindled to some 250 plus, while the cheetahs indigenes to India have been wiped out completely since 1953. So, with the king cheetah blending into this scarce and very private family of animals, it’s a wonder that we know of him at all.
So many grand and wonderful hopes and schemes were meant to be hatched of nature’s newest phenomenon, the king cheetah. Genetically, every single cheetah in the world over the past 100 years has been the exact replica of the next one. Country of origin, regional habitat, nor diet could change the inevitable, that if it looked like cheetah and walked like a cheetah, it was exactly the same as the cheetah before it. Simple enough, until real scientists in the field of animal study first gathered the official proof that the king cheetah was real, live, and well, though his markings were far different from his genetically exact brethren. And this caused the heads of the animal study to sniff something amiss with these new fangled cheetahs.
The cheetah is the fastest land dwelling animal on earth, reaching speeds of over 70 miles per hour when in full flight after prey. His long, springy body is tuned for tightness to the ground and huge stride while in flight. He has stripes on his face, anywhere from one to five on each side. His body is flecked with round spots, and these tend to be fairly regular in size and distance throughout his coat. The king cheetah, however, shares nearly none of these coloring traits, and the mystery surrounding this was delved into by zoologists who decided to mate pairs of normal cheetahs in an attempt to produce this irregular pattern.
Successful breeding of the first captive king cheetah was accomplished at this point, and this little guy was born of two very normal looking cheetahs. Gently, yet with diligence, they began to perform DNA and genetic testing on the captive king cheetah to determine what the case was with this spotty faced, black dorsal striped, leopard spotted miracle. The results were not nearly as glamorous or dramatic as we would have hoped for, as the color variation is merely caused by a mutated recessive gene. It’s as simple as that, folks.