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African Wildcat (Felis lybica)

Every domestic cat you will ever see is descendant from the African wildcat. Whatever the cat, whether a tabby pet or a hybrid designer breed, their origins will be a wild species that continues to roam the African savannah. African wildcats tough it out with lions and leopards. They are expert hunters and can fight for their food. These beautiful animals are misunderstood. Nobody cares too much about an African wildcat. There are more impressive sights on safari. People outside Africa prefer to stroke and feed their own cats. Credit Source: africafreak.com Image: Emdonenilodge.com

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Fun Facts About Cheetah’s

Known for being the world’s fastest land animal, the cheetah is a large feline that can run up to 75 miles per hour in short bursts to cover distances up to 1,600 feet and accelerate to over 60 miles per hour within just three seconds! Easily recognizable from the other popular big cats for their spotted coat, characteristic “tear stripes” from the corner of the eyes, and smaller size, the cheetah possesses a lean, long-legged build manufactured for speed. Read on to learn more fun facts about cheetahs and find out why this fast cat is a true marvel of evolution. CHEETAH HABITAT WHERE DO CHEETAHS LIVE? Historically, cheetahs were once found throughout all of the African and Asian continents from the far reaches of South Africa all the way to India. However, the species is now confined to parts of eastern, central, and southwestern Africa with small isolated populations found in southwestern Asia. Still retaining a rather wide distribution through most of sub-Saharan Africa, including Zambia, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe, the largest populations of cheetahs today are found on African natural reserves or parks. Found mostly in grassy savannah plains, scrub forests, grasslands, and semi-arid deserts, cheetahs need to inhabit areas that are infinitely open with plenty of area to roam or run after their prey. Since cheetahs rely on being able to camouflage themselves in the grass while stalking after their dinner, the animals are mostly seen in areas that have thick vegetation and where their favorite foods are located. CHEETAH DIET WHAT DO CHEETAHS EAT? As a truly carnivorous animal that depends on meat for survival, the cheetah utilizing its speed to hunt various prey that inhabit the open or partially open savannah. In general, the diet of the cheetah consists of gazelles, wildebeest calves, impalas, and smaller hoofed animals in its habitat. Furthermore, cheetahs may eat rabbits, birds, hares, antelopes, and warthogs. Since water can be very scarce in its native land, cheetahs have the ability to survive with just one drink every three or four days. Camouflaged against the tall grasses, cheetahs quietly sneak up on their prey until they are confident about the attack, burst out using their tail as a rudder, trip the animal with their paw, and then suffocate it with a bite to the neck. After making the kill, cheetahs must eat quickly or drag the food to a hiding spot before any lions, leopards, or hyenas steal it. While they may be the speediest animal, only half of the 20-60 second hunts are actually successful. PHYSICAL TRAITS Since the animals can reach top speeds in no time, cheetahs have a slender body frame that is both lightweight and aerodynamic. Averaging a shoulder height of 30 inches, most cheetahs are between 110 to 140 pounds on their small stature. With long legs, loose hip joints, and a flexible spine, cheetahs have the ability to cover up to 25 feet in one stride. Their muscular legs mainly consists of fast twitch fibers to contract much faster than normal, while their wide nostrils and lungs provide more oxygen for sprints. As one of the species’ trademark features, cheetahs have coarse short fur that is tan with round black spots and black “tear stripes” running from the corner of the eyes down the side of the nose for keeping sunlight out of their eyes. While it is generally shorter-bodied, cheetahs are taller and have a longer tail ending in a bushy white tuft for a more streamlined appearance. Designed to grip the grass floor, the cheetah has blunt non-retractable claws for traction. BEHAVIOR Unlike lions or hyenas, cheetahs are diurnal animals with poor night vision that prefer to hunt their prey through the daytime hours, especially in the late morning and early evening. While they are typically solitary animals and females generally raise their cubs in solitude, they are thought to be the most sociable big cat because siblings stay together for six months after leaving the mother and male cheetahs sometimes live with a small group of brothers from the same litter for life. Males are often aggressive towards other males when battling to mate with a female, but cheetahs will give up their catch to another larger animal to avoid a fight. REPRODUCTION Maturing rather rapidly, males are ready to mate when they are one year old and females will be ready to do so when they are two years old. As animals that engage in a behavior called polygyny, male and female cheetahs will mate with many different members of the opposite sex during their lifetime. After a female gives birth, she will feed the young milk from her body, protect them from predators, begin teaching them to hunt, and eventually leave them alone at one year of age. MATING SEASON Unlike most other big wild cats, cheetahs breed throughout the year without a regular established mating season. However, the seasons where there is a better food supply is when most of the breeding will occur. GESTATION PERIOD Once fertilization has occurred, the pregnancy period will last for approximately three months and the male cheetah will not remain with the female after mating. TYPICAL LITTER SIZE After gestation, female cheetahs can give birth to a litter of up to eight cubs. Since the young cheetahs are at particular danger of attack from predators, the cubs have a distinctive smoky coat color with wooly hair down their backs to camouflage them in the tall grass. POPULATION According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, it is estimated that there are between 9,000 and 12,000 cheetahs remaining in the wild in Africa with a small pocket of around 200 cheetahs living in isolation in Iran. Once a wide-ranging species with over 100,000 the range a century ago, the dramatic decrease in cheetah population is alarming. THREATS TO CHEETAHS While they may be the fastest land animal, wildlife biologists have begun to question whether they can outrun extinction. Currently

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Cat Information

Ways Cheetahs adapt to their surroundings for survival

The cheetah is a survivor! Using highly adaptive traits and skills, it has carved out a perfect niche which only a cheetah can fill! Using it’s amazing body, biology, behavior and smarts, the cheetah has been a top predator for millions of years. Cheetahs have evolved to fit into environments from Asia, through the Middle East, to most of the continent of Africa, including much of the desolate Sahara Desert. Historically, cheetahs even ranged throughout Eurasia, and the plains of North America, and it is believed this is the reason for the blistering speed of the American Pronghorn Antelope, the second-fastest land animal on earth, as it evolved to keep away from the lightning-fast cheetah of the past! The open plains of wild habitats are huge expanses, with fast, agile prey such as gazelles and antelope, and many other fast predators such as lions and wild canines. Cheetahs survive in these competitive environments by using many different, special traits that have evolved over millennia, including an extremely flexible spine, and long legs for speed and stride length. Their muscles are long and lean like a runner, not like a brawler (like the lion or leopard), and they have light, tall bodies for their size. They have super large lungs, heart and nostrils in order to take in and use large amounts of oxygen during short, fast sprints. Unique to the cheetah are shoulder blades that do not attach to the collar bone and freely pivoting hips which give even more stretch to their 7 meter stride. During the daytime on the plains, the scorching sun can reflect its heat and light off of the light-colored grasses and flatlands, making long-distance vision and accuracy difficult for most predators. The head of a cheetah is smaller and more streamlined than other big cats, including the famous “tear marks,” or black markings that extend from the eyes down the muzzle, which are believed to help with the refractive glare of the sun on the wide, hot plains on which they primarily hunt. Their round, black spots on tawny, tan coats give them good camouflage while lying in the grass or in the dappled shade of brush, or while stalking prey in the beginning stage of a hunt, but they are light enough in color to decrease heat absorption during daytime activity. Leopards are the “Kings of the Trees,” ambush predators with true cat-like-retractable claws and unmatched climbing abilities. Lions amble in near leisure on the plains due to the safety of the pride numbers, hunting in groups and using their sheer size, strength and numbers to take down large prey like zebra, giraffe, buffalo, even young elephants. Cheetahs, on the other hand, possess semi-retractable claws (something in between the retractable claws of a leopard, and the non-retractable claws of a dog) which give extremely high traction for acceleration, break-neck turning maneuvers and rapid deceleration while hunting. Their tail is extra long to act as a balancing “rudder” while performing extreme turns at high speed. Other predators would need quite a lot of luck to catch the fastest of prey animals, but the cheetah is made for it. The tight binding of the tibia and the fibula restrict rotation of the lower leg, stabilizing the legs for speed, although this reduces the cheetah’s climbing ability compared to a leopard. Cheetahs will also hunt during the day, while most other predators are resting or hiding. These and other specialized adaptations give cheetahs a very special niche in which they thrive. They do well in wide open areas, hunting fast, lean, agile animals, using their excellent sight and flatland maneuverability. They climb trees only casually, and do not hide, sleep, or eat in trees like leopards. With so many dangers from other strong predators, the cheetah chooses to avoid a fight, knowing that damage to it’s lean, runners body would be disastrous. Even many larger herbivores like zebra, eland, giraffe, hippo, rhino and the like can put up a good fight, causing significant damage to a 100 lb cat made for speed. Cheetahs are smart enough to run from a fight, using their iconic speed, realizing their advantageous endowments and their limitations, rather than tough it out like a massively muscled lion would, or even a large herbivore such as rhino. A mother cheetah, though, to ensure the survival of her young, will attempt to fight off any who come near her cubs, sometimes and unfortunately, to her own death. Above all, cheetahs fit perfectly into a niche which no other predator can, and their behaviors are well suited to life as the supreme speed hunter of the open plains. Their hunting style differs greatly from the stalk-pounce-wrestle style of the leopard, or the group-take-down style of the lion, and they will not scavenge like the hyena, and do not engage in long-distance marathon hunts like the African Wild Dogs. Their hunting efficiency is around 50%, but scavengers such as the jackal and hyena, or even the lion, will often steal their kill, making them an integral part of the ecosystem as a food procurer for many others. They are uniquely adapted to thrive in their ecosystem… but in the last hundred years or so, human encroachment, killing due to misconceptions, trophy hunting, cheetah cubs being stolen for the exotic pet trade, indiscriminate poaching and other detrimental human activities, have reduced their numbers by 93%. This predator’s range has been reduced or fragmented so dramatically by human encroachment, that they are now in grave danger of extinction, with less than 8,000 adult cheetahs left in the wild. Bush-encroachment has also become a severe threat to the cheetah’s survival in its environment. Since farmers and herders are over-grazing their livestock in grasslands where cheetahs historically hunt, heavy thorn-bush has begun take hold of the plains, as the grasses that normally contribute to a balanced variety of vegetation are grazed and trampled out of the area. These thorn bushes that normally existed only in certain areas

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BASIC FACTS ABOUT CHEETAHS

The fastest land animal in the world, the cheetah is a marvel of evolution. The cheetah’s slender, long-legged body is built for speed. Cheetahs are tan in color with black spots all over their bodies. They can also be distinguished from other big cats by their smaller size, spotted coats, small heads and ears and distinctive “tear stripes” that stretch from the corner of the eye to the side of the nose. Diet Cheetahs eat mainly gazelles, wildebeest calves, impalas and smaller hoofed animals. Population Did You Know? When cheetahs are running, they use their tails to help them steer and turn in the direction they want to go, like the rudder of a boat. In 1900, there were over 100,000 cheetahs across their historic range. Today, an estimated 9,000 to 12,000 cheetahs remain in the wild in Africa. In Iran, there are around 200 cheetahs living in small isolated populations. Range Historically cheetahs were found throughout Africa and Asia from South Africa to India. They are now confined to parts of eastern, central and southwestern Africa and a small portion of Iran. Behavior Found mostly in open and partially open savannah, cheetahs rely on tall grasses for camouflage when hunting. They are diurnal (more active in the day) animals and hunt mostly during the late morning or early evening. Only half of the chases, which last from 20 – 60 seconds, are successful. Did You Know? Unlike other big cats, cheetahs cannot roar. However, they can purr on both inhale and exhale, like domestic cats! Cheetahs are also typically solitary animals. While males sometimes live with a small group of brothers from the same litter, females generally raise cubs by themselves for about a year. Reproduction Mating Season: Throughout the year. Gestation: Around 3 months. Litter size: 2-4 cubs Cubs are smoky in colour with long, woolly hair – called a mantle – running down their backs. This mantle is thought to camouflage cubs in grass, concealing them from predators. Mothers move cubs to new hiding places every few days. At 5 – 6 weeks, cubs follow the mother and begin eating from their kills.

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50 of the best fun & random facts about animals

Gorillas can catch human colds and other illnesses. A newborn Chinese water deer is so small it can almost be held in the palm of the hand. Ostriches can run faster than horses, and the males can roar like lions. A lion in the wild usually makes no more than twenty kills a year. The female lion does ninety percent of the hunting. The only dog that doesn’t have a pink tongue is the chow. Turtles, water snakes, crocodiles, alligators, dolphins, whales, and other water going creatures will drown if kept underwater too long. Almost half the pigs in the world are kept by farmers in China. On average, dogs have better eyesight than humans, although not as colorful. Deer have no gall bladders. There is an average of 50,000 spiders per acre in green areas. Snakes are carnivores, which means they only eat animals, often small ones such as insects, birds, frogs and other small mammals. In Alaska it is illegal to whisper in someone’s ear while they’re moose hunting. The bat is the only mammal that can fly. The leg bones of a bat are so thin that no bat can walk. Some male songbirds sing more than 2000 times each day. The only mammals to undergo menopause are elephants, humpback whales and human females. Blue-eyed lemurs are one of two (non-human) primates to have truly blue eyes. A tarantula spider can survive for more than two years without food. For every human in the world there are one million ants. If you lift a kangaroo’s tail off the ground it can’t hop – they use their tails for balance. If you keep a goldfish. in a dark room, it will become pale! Cows can sleep standing up, but they can only dream lying down. The sentence “The quick brown fox jumps over a lazy dog.” uses every letter of the alphabet. The average fox weighs 14 pounds. The scientific name of the red fox is Vulpes vulpes. Alligators can live up to 100 years. A single elephant tooth can weigh as much as 9 pounds. The turkey is one of the most famous birds in North America. A housefly hums in the key of F. During World War II, Americans tried to train bats to drop bombs. Canis lupus lupus is the scientific name for a grey wolf. To escape the grip of a crocodile’s jaw, push your thumb into its eyeballs-it will let you go instantly. It is much easier for dogs to learn spoken commands if they are given in conjunction with hand signals or gestures. Even a small amount of alcohol placed on a scorpion will make it go crazy and sting itself to death! Male rabbits are called “bucks,” females are “does.” The flamingo can only eat when its head is upside down. Animals generate 30 times more waste than humans which is 1.4 billion tons every year. Ants never sleep. Also they don’t have lungs. A group of owls is called a parliament. Just one cow gives off enough harmful methane gas in a single day to fill around 400 litre bottles. Apple and pear seeds contain arsenic, which may be deadly to dogs. Cows have one large stomach that is divided into four compartments to go through the different stages of digestion. An anteater is nearly 6 feet long, yet its mouth is only an inch wide. The blue whale weighs as much as thirty elephants and is as long as three Greyhound buses. A herd of sixty cows is capable of producing a ton of milk in less than a day. A grasshopper can leap 20 times the length of its own body. At birth, baby kangaroos are only about an inch long – no bigger than a large water bug or a queen bee. The smell of a skunk can be detected by a human a mile away. There is a butterfly in Africa with enough poison in its body to kill six cats!

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