gimme more factz! love it
Well, for example, did you know cheetah is the fastes land animal on the planet?
Okay seriously, though.
1) As we robbed cheetahs of their natural habitat and prey, their population dwindled from 100k at the beginning of 20th century to less than 10k today.
2) Unlike other big cats who can roar but can't purr (some big cats purr on exhale, but not continuously), cheetahs have vocal chords similar to small cats and can purr, chirp and meow.
3) People usually see cheetahs as a savannah animal, but interestingly, thanks to their incredible agility during chase (as well as speed, of course) their success ratio is higher in the forest areas.
4) If they are eating every day, they only need to drink every 4 days, which is longer than a camel can last.
5) Not only they are the fastest animal (some antelopes are almost as fast), they are the fastest
accelerating animal. They can do 0-60 in under 3s, same as a supercar.
6) They have unusually muscular tail and use it to steer during chase, swinging it in circular motion clockwise or counter-clockwise, using the gyroscopic effect. At full speed they can take a 90° turn with a radius of less than 5 meters without losing momentum.
7) Their short range during chase isn't due to the lack of stamina, but heat. Cheetahs body at peak load is warming up by 1°C per second, reaching 41-42°C after approximately 300 meters.
8) Although it may seem (from documentaries and such) that they hunt alone, they actually usually hunt in a group, not dissimilar to wolves. They are also similarly social and altogether they are very "canine" when comes to these things. They also choose the size of their prey according to the size of their group.
The only exception are mothers with cubs, who usually prefers raising them alone.
Males and females form separate groups and don't really hang out together except for mating.
9) They can't climb trees. Mostly because they have non-retractable (and therefore blunt) claws.
10) When mother teaches her cubs to hunt, she repeatedly trips the victim or mutilates its hind legs to give the little buggers a chance.
11) While cheetahs generally hunt in the afternoon (to avoid crossing paths with lions), when mother is raising cubs, she goes hunting early in the morning when hyenas are sleeping after party
12) Young cheetahs are more than capable of hunting their own prey by the age of 1 year, though mother usually sticks around for another year or two to help and teach extra tricks.
13) Cheetahs can be domesticated and in africa and middle east (Sumer, Mezopotamia) they've been kept as pets and trained for hunting for at least 5-6 thousand years (long before first mentions of dogs being used the same way)
14) The "cats" on Egyptian murals that lead us to believe they worshipped cats were cheetahs
15) There are 2 million years old fossils of giant cheetahs (more than twice as big as the modern ones) that have almost exactly the same body structure, suggesting that cheetah's body really IS a peak evolutionary build, just like shark's, for example.
So... happy?
Cheetahs are just majestic. Fantastic animals!
