Cheetah Trivia
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47 free Cheetah trivia questions with answers — nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This cheetah trivia quiz covers the fastest animal on land and one of the most fragile. The easy questions handle the basics: how fast it really runs, what makes it different from a leopard, where it lives, what it hunts and how it kills. The harder end goes deeper: the flexible spine and rudder tail that make the sprint possible, why the claws barely retract, the 'immobile nails' behind the name Acinonyx, the genetic bottleneck that lets unrelated cheetahs accept each other's skin grafts, the king cheetah mutation, male coalitions, chirps and churrs, hunting success rates, Iran's last few dozen Asiatic cheetahs, the 1947 shooting of India's last wild ones and the Namibian cheetahs released at Kuno in 2022, plus the Mughal emperor who kept a thousand of them. Every answer was checked against the encyclopaedia entry before publishing and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. Our big cats, lions and African animals quizzes are the natural next stop.
30 of 47 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In 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
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.
Q 02About how long does a cheetah take to accelerate from a standstill to 60 mph?
About 3 seconds
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.
Q 03What is the cheetah's scientific name?
Acinonyx jubatus
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.
Q 04Cheetahs cannot roar, but which sound can they keep up on both the in-breath and the out-breath?
A purr
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.
Q 05The word 'cheetah' comes via Hindi from a Sanskrit word describing the cat's coat as what?
Variegated or painted
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.
Q 06The cheetah's closest living relatives are the little jaguarundi and which larger cat?
The cougar
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.
Q 07Which facial feature is unique to cheetahs among cats?
Black tear streaks from the eyes to the mouth
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.
Q 08How do a cheetah's claws differ from most cats' claws?
They are only partly retractile and blunt
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.
Q 09What role does the cheetah's tail play at full speed?
It acts as a rudder
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.
Q 10Which part of a cheetah's body flexes like a spring to stretch each stride up to seven metres?
Its spine
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.
Q 11With its deep chest, narrow waist and long legs, the cheetah is often likened to which dog?
A greyhound
A greyhound: the likeness goes beyond looks, since tame cheetahs were once loosed at antelope for sport much as greyhounds are coursed after hares.
Q 12Cheetahs have small canines to make room for what?
Airways
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.
Q 13Cheetah cubs smuggled out of the Horn of Africa are mostly sold as what?
Exotic pets
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.
Q 21What is the high-pitched call a cheetah makes when excited or summoning its cubs?
A chirp
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.
Q 22Which antelope is the cheetah's main prey on the Serengeti plains?
Thomson's gazelle
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.
Q 23How does a sprinting cheetah bring down prey?
It hooks the prey's legs or rump with its dewclaw
Q 14Where do most of Africa's remaining wild cheetahs live?
Outside protected areas
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.
Q 15Before India's 2022 reintroduction, which country alone had wild cheetahs outside Africa?
Iran
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.
Q 16India's first eight cheetahs for seventy years were flown in from which southern African country in September 2022?
Namibia
Namibia: the eight cats left Windhoek in a modified Boeing 747 and were released by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on his birthday.
Q 17Into which Indian national park were African cheetahs released in September 2022?
Kuno National Park
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.
Q 18Tame hunting cheetahs were kept hooded until the quarry was close, just like which other hunting animals?
Falcons
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.
Q 19What is a group of male cheetahs that live and defend a territory together called?
A coalition
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.
Q 20Female cheetahs range far wider than males because they follow what?
Migrating prey
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.
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.
Q 24How does a cheetah usually kill an antelope?
By clamping its throat
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.
Q 25Which sense does a cheetah chiefly rely on to find and single out its prey?
Sight
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.
Q 26How does a cheetah usually respond when a bigger carnivore comes for its kill?
It gives up the 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.
Q 27What must a cheetah usually do after a kill before it eats?
Catch its breath
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.
Q 28Cheetah cubs' long grey mantle may be mimicry of which famously fierce animal?
A honey badger
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.
Q 29What is the main cause of death for cheetah cubs?
Predators such as lions and hyenas
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.
Q 30How does a cheetah mother teach her cubs to hunt?
Releasing live prey
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.