Cheetah

The cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus) is the fastest land animal, able to sprint at more than 90 kilometers per hour in short bursts. A specialized pursuit predator of African grasslands, it is listed as Vulnerable, with a small and fragmented population.

🧬 Field Guide Specimen: Open Cheetah in the CRV Science Field Guide to log the specimen, see its place among the Mammals lineages in the Cladogram Explorer, and test your recall in the Red List conservation game.

A slim body, deep chest, long limbs, a flexible spine and a long tail used as a rudder let cheetahs accelerate extremely quickly. Claws that are only partly retractable act like running spikes. Sprints last only a few hundred meters because the animal overheats and builds up oxygen debt.

Cheetahs have unusually low genetic diversity, which suggests that the species went through a severe bottleneck at the end of the last Ice Age. Today only several thousand remain across Africa, with a tiny Asiatic population in Iran. Habitat fragmentation, loss of prey and conflict with livestock owners threaten them.

Cheetahs belong to Felidae, in a lineage that separated from other big cats several million years ago. They cannot roar, and they hunt by day, unlike many carnivores, partly to avoid competition from lions and hyenas that steal their kills.

• Snow Leopard — another threatened big cat
• Spotted Hyena — a competitor that steals kills