Justine just sent in the photos she shot last week when she spotted the cheetahs on our safari game reserve for the third time last week. These are the closest photos we have ever managed to take of a cheetah on our reserve, and this cheetah is a particularly beautiful animal.
She was very relaxed around the vehicle, so she must be offspring of a cheetah from another busy game reserve, so she is used to seeing vehicles and know they do not present danger. That is great news, as she will pass on this behavior to her cubs, ensuring that the unique safari experience that we have on our reserve at the momemt is enhanced even further in the future.
So what is unique about the cheetah, and why is it classified as endangered?
The cheetah is the fastest animal on earth, reaching speeds of up to 115 km/hour on distances of up to 500m! So they combine two things that other cats don’t achieve at the same time. Extraordinary speed (the cheetah is much faster than a lion), and somewhat more endurance (the lion cannot keep up a chase for up to 500m). That said, the cheetah is a smaller animal, and therefore it is vulnerable to other cat predators, and so the survival chances of cubs are also smaller. The cubs also require a lot of training before they can set off on their own, and Cheetahs’ hunting techniques are very sophisticated. Timing and tactics is everything, and this is an acquired skill. Cheetah mothers spend a long time teaching!
Another interesting fact: the genetic diversity of cheetahs is very low, as it is believed that they went through a period of inbreeding during a bottleneck period at the last ice age. As a result, a skin graft from any cheetah used on any other cheetah is not rejected. That’s how low the genetic diversity is. This has caused low sperm numbers, birth defects and other issues leading to higher cub mortality. That said, the claim that cheetahs are endangered because of this is probably false. Cheetahs did very well for thousands of years after the ice age, and so it’s more recent troubles must be caused primarily by other factors: human activity and habitat destruction on a massive scale, as well as hunting and targeted killing by farmers are the main culprits.
Today, only about 12,500 specimen are living in the wild, in 25 different African countries primarily. The numbers seem to be stabilizing, and is some rare cases, to be rising, but only very modestly. So the fact that the number of cheetahs has risen so fast on our reserve, as the increased occurrence of sightings suggests, is of great importance to this threatened species. and quite simply great news.
Tourism does indeed protect nature!
