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Cheetah - ACENONYX JUBATUS
Endangered
Class: Animals with Milk Glands (Mammalia)
The Name "Cheetah": "Cheetah" comes from the Hindi word "cita," meaning "speckled."
Location: Africa south of the Sahara, southwestern Asia.
Habitat: Terrestrial. Savanna and arid, open grasslands.
Description: The cheetah resembles an extremely streamlined leopard, and its head looks small in proportion to the rest of its body. Its legs are long and its back is concave. It has a distinctive black mark on each side of its face, and the rest of its body is varying shades of yellow with numerous black spots. These cats reach six and a half feet long, and the tail adds another two feet or more to that length. They weigh up to 130 pounds, with the female smaller than the male.
Behavior: The somewhat gregarious cheetah hunts by day, preferably at dawn and sundown. It gets as close as possible to its prey, and then breaks into a short and very fast sprint in pursuit of its victim. It cannot run like this for very long, but it can reach speeds up to 70 mph, making it the fastest land mammal! It attacks many species of small gazelles and the young of other ungulates. It is not an aggressive animal to humans, and has often been tamed and used as a hunting aid. It is a quiet, shy animal, which does not tolerate environmental changes very well, nor does it like being near areas frequented by man. As a result, its numbers today have fallen drastically, and its survival is in danger.
Reproduction: After about a 95-day gestation, one to eight cubs are born. They nurse for about six weeks and become independent after a few months.
Go to the Carnivore Page to learn more about all the meat-eating animals.
Or go to the Cat Index to study other
wild cats.
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