47 Fun Facts About Cheetah

In 2012 a zoo cheetah named Sarah ran 100 metres in 5.95 seconds, well inside which sprinter's 9.58-second world record?

Usain Bolt: Sarah, an 11-year-old at Cincinnati Zoo, hit 61 mph chasing a fluffy toy dog towed across a measured course during a National Geographic photo shoot.

About how long does a cheetah take to accelerate from a standstill to 60 mph?

About 3 seconds: that is quicker off the mark than most cars, yet a cheetah can hold its top speed for only a few hundred metres before it has to give up the chase.

What is the cheetah's scientific name?

Acinonyx jubatus: jubatus is Latin for 'maned', a nod to the crest of long hair on the neck and shoulders, and no other living cat shares the cheetah's genus.

Cheetahs cannot roar, but which sound can they keep up on both the in-breath and the out-breath?

A purr: mothers purr over newborn cubs as they groom them, and the sound can roll on for minutes because it never has to stop for breath.

The word 'cheetah' comes via Hindi from a Sanskrit word describing the cat's coat as what?

Variegated or painted: the Sanskrit compound is literally 'speckled body', which became chita in Hindi, so the world's fastest cat is named for its spots and not its speed.

The cheetah's closest living relatives are the little jaguarundi and which larger cat?

The cougar: DNA puts all three on one branch, so the cheetah's nearest kin are cats of the Americas and not the spotted big cats it lives beside in Africa.

Which facial feature is unique to cheetahs among cats?

Black tear streaks from the eyes to the mouth are thought to cut the sun's glare, though nobody has shown for certain what they are for.

How do a cheetah's claws differ from most cats' claws?

They are only partly retractile and blunt: with no sheath to protect them the claws wear down on the ground, but they grip it like the spikes on a sprinter's shoes.

What role does the cheetah's tail play at full speed?

It acts as a rudder: the long tail swings from side to side to steady a cheetah through sharp turns, which lets it stay with prey that swerves at full speed.

Which part of a cheetah's body flexes like a spring to stretch each stride up to seven metres?

Its spine: it coils and straightens with every bound, flinging the legs so far apart that a cheetah is clear of the ground for more than half of a sprint.

With its deep chest, narrow waist and long legs, the cheetah is often likened to which dog?

A greyhound: the likeness goes beyond looks, since tame cheetahs were once loosed at antelope for sport much as greyhounds are coursed after hares.

Cheetahs have small canines to make room for what?

Airways: wide nasal passages let a sprinting cheetah gulp in air fast, and the price is that no space is left for the long roots that anchor big fangs.

Cheetah cubs smuggled out of the Horn of Africa are mostly sold as what?

Exotic pets: a cheetah is treated as a status symbol in parts of the Middle East, and wildlife groups warn that the cubs taken each year are draining wild populations.

Where do most of Africa's remaining wild cheetahs live?

Outside protected areas: most cheetahs share farmland with people and livestock, which is why being trapped or shot by farmers is among the biggest threats they face.

Before India's 2022 reintroduction, which country alone had wild cheetahs outside Africa?

Iran: so few Asiatic cheetahs are left in its deserts that the national football team wore the cat on its shirts at the 2014 World Cup.

India's first eight cheetahs for seventy years were flown in from which southern African country in September 2022?

Namibia: the eight cats left Windhoek in a modified Boeing 747 and were released by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on his birthday.

Into which Indian national park were African cheetahs released in September 2022?

Kuno National Park: villages had been moved out to make it a second home for Gir's Asiatic lions, but Gujarat never sent the lions and the cheetahs got it instead.

Tame hunting cheetahs were kept hooded until the quarry was close, just like which other hunting animals?

Falcons: a keeper lifted the hood only when game was close, then turned the cheetah's head towards the quarry and let it go, as a painting by Stubbs shows.

What is a group of male cheetahs that live and defend a territory together called?

A coalition: usually two or three brothers from one litter who stay together for life, and as a team they can hold a territory that a lone male would soon lose.

Female cheetahs range far wider than males because they follow what?

Migrating prey: where the herds are on the move, females trail them over vast ranges, while males hold small territories and wait for the females to pass through.

What is the high-pitched call a cheetah makes when excited or summoning its cubs?

A chirp: cheetahs cannot roar, so the fastest cat on land calls like a songbird, and a mother's loud chirp can reach cubs more than a kilometre away.

Which antelope is the cheetah's main prey on the Serengeti plains?

Thomson's gazelle: lightly built for speed, a cheetah cannot overpower large animals, so it singles out small, fast antelope, often a straggler at the edge of the herd.

How does a sprinting cheetah bring down prey?

It hooks the prey's legs or rump with its dewclaw: one swipe of the curved claw on its foreleg knocks a fleeing animal off balance, and the cheetah is on it before it can get up.

How does a cheetah usually kill an antelope?

By clamping its throat: with teeth too short for a quick killing bite, a cheetah grips the windpipe and holds on until the animal suffocates.

Which sense does a cheetah chiefly rely on to find and single out its prey?

Sight: a cheetah climbs a termite mound or a low branch to scan the plain, then picks out one animal and stalks it before the final sprint.

How does a cheetah usually respond when a bigger carnivore comes for its kill?

It gives up the kill: with a light frame and small teeth a cheetah is no match in a fight, which is why it eats as fast as it can.

What must a cheetah usually do after a kill before it eats?

Catch its breath: a sprint leaves a cheetah so spent that it may lie panting beside the carcass for twenty minutes or more before it takes a bite.

Cheetah cubs' long grey mantle may be mimicry of which famously fierce animal?

A honey badger: pale on top and dark below like the notoriously aggressive ratel, a small cub may be taken for one and left alone; the mantle is shed at about three months.

What is the main cause of death for cheetah cubs?

Predators such as lions and hyenas kill most cubs that die, because a mother cannot fight them off; all she can do is hide the litter and move it to a new den every few days.

How does a cheetah mother teach her cubs to hunt?

Releasing live prey: from about six months a mother captures an animal and lets it go in front of her cubs, so they can practise on it before they must fend for themselves.

Duma, the title of a 2005 film about a boy and his cheetah, means 'cheetah' in which language?

Swahili: the film grew out of a true story, a children's book that young Xan Hopcraft wrote with his mother about his own friendship with a cheetah.

What is remarkable about skin grafts between unrelated cheetahs?

They usually heal, as between twins: cheetahs are so alike genetically that the body rarely treats another's skin as foreign, a sameness that also leaves the species open to the same diseases.

What is a 'king cheetah'?

A rare mutation with blotchy spots and dark stripes: once named as a separate species, the king cheetah was unmasked when ordinary spotted cheetahs in captivity produced king cubs in normal litters.

Zoo researchers found that a male cheetah's rhythmic 'stutter-bark' has what effect on a female?

It brings her into season: female cheetahs often fail to cycle on their own, so a San Diego park played recorded stutter-barks over loudspeakers and saw more of its pairs go on to breed.

Ancient Egyptians, who kept tame cheetahs at court, believed the swift cats carried away what?

The pharaoh's soul, borne to the afterlife: the taste for tame cheetahs long outlived the pharaohs, lasting more than four thousand years and reaching the royal courts of Europe and India.

Which Mughal emperor is said to have kept as many as 1,000 imperial cheetahs?

Akbar the Great: for all those cats, only a single litter was ever recorded at the Mughal court, an early sign of how badly cheetahs breed in captivity.

Which ancient Egyptian deity of the First Dynasty was sometimes depicted as a cheetah?

Mafdet: a punisher of wrongdoers, she guarded the king against snakes and scorpions, and Egypt's kings kept tame cheetahs of their own.

The hard pads on a cheetah's feet are often compared to which man-made item?

Tyre treads: ridges along the pads bite into the ground, giving a cheetah extra traction when it swerves after its prey at speed.

Several zoos raise cheetah cubs alongside which animal as a lifelong companion?

A puppy: Sarah, the fastest cheetah ever timed, grew up at Cincinnati Zoo with an Anatolian shepherd called Alexa, and the pair toured schools together for years.

Which organisation, founded by Laurie Marker in 1990, runs a genetics laboratory for cheetah research at Otjiwarongo?

The Cheetah Conservation Fund: Marker left a job at the Smithsonian to set it up, and its Bushblok scheme turns the thorn bush choking cheetah country into fuel logs.

Which painter's Bacchus and Ariadne shows the god's chariot drawn by two cheetahs?

Titian caught the god in mid-air, leaping from his chariot towards Ariadne, in a picture made for the Duke of Ferrara's private Alabaster Room.

A Stubbs painting commemorates the cheetah given in 1764 to which British king?

George III handed the cheetah to the Duke of Cumberland, who tried it against a stag at Windsor: the stag beat off two attacks and then chased the cheetah away.

How many documented lethal attacks by wild cheetahs on humans are there?

None: no wild cheetah is on record as having killed a person, and the few deaths known all involved captive animals, such as one in a Belgian zoo in 2007.

When are cheetahs mainly active?

Daytime, especially dawn and dusk: most cats hunt at night, so cheetahs are the big cats farmers actually see, and they take much of the blame when livestock goes missing.

Cheetahs tamed for coursing game were once commonly known by which name?

Hunting leopards: the Hindi word chita covered the leopard as well, and Europeans who watched Indian princes loose the tame cats at antelope took them for a kind of leopard.

How is the cheetah classified on the IUCN Red List?

Vulnerable: about 7,000 remain, and in recent years scientists have urged the IUCN to move the cheetah up to Endangered after counting sizeable losses.

Which North American animal is thought to owe its speed to fleeing an extinct cheetah-like cat?

The pronghorn: it can sprint at about 50 mph, faster than any predator now on its plains, though newer studies suggest the so-called American cheetah hunted a wider range of prey.