Felines are the strongest in nature, and most of their members, in their microhabitas, are king-level beings, especially lions and tigers, who stand at the top of the hundred beasts and are the strongest predators in existence.
However, tall can also find short, big cats also have weak people, cheetah in the evolution of thousands of years, in order to pursue the ultimate speed, lost a lot of combat effectiveness, in the African savannah by hyenas, wild dogs in turn to bully, so it is known as the first of the "three shames of the cat family", the other two are serval cats and Canadian lynx.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="13" > to pursue the ultimate speed and lose a lot of combat effectiveness</h1>
The fastest human bolt speed is about 37 km / h, the average speed of cheetah hunting is 64 km / h, and the instantaneous sprint speed can be as high as 112 km / h, so the cheetah has become the fastest animal on land.
Most cats are not fast, so they have trained a skill of ambush, why can cheetahs alone have such speed? This is because in the long process of species evolution, they have gradually transformed their bodies into suitable for running.
The cheetah's body is streamlined, with slender limbs and inability to indent the paws of the paws, similar to canines that are good at running. In addition, the cheetah is light in weight, and although the muscles on the body are slender, they are extremely strong, and with a strong and flexible spine, the cheetah has become a sprint champion.
But it is not okay to have a shell suitable for running, and other aspects of the software support must also keep up. The proportion of the nose and chest cavity of the cheetah is larger than that of the average animal to ensure that it can inhale enough oxygen every breath it breathes during the run.
While running at high speeds, the vision is blurred, while the cheetah is able to keep its mind balanced and its eyes fixed on its prey, all thanks to the unique structure of its inner ear.
There is a paper in the journal Science Reports that explains this structure in detail, which roughly means that the researchers compared the skulls of 21 cats and found that the vestibular system of cheetahs accounts for the largest proportion in the inner ear, the proportion of most cats is only 32%, and the proportion of cheetahs is as high as 38%-43.7%, which makes them able to maintain balance even in the case of galloping, so that they can maintain better visual stability.
With its huge speed advantage, it is as easy for cheetahs to catch their cubs in large ungulates. In 2012, a group of researchers recorded 192 hunting behaviors of cheetahs in the Serengeti savannah, of which 114 were successfully captured, with a 58% success rate, which was enough to make a group of cats ashamed.
It should be known that the success rate of the lion is only 17%-19%, and the success rate of tigers when preying on deer is only 38%. However, the speed allows the cheetahs to enjoy a huge dividend, and it also brings them a huge hidden danger, that is, the combat effectiveness is too poor.
Overall, the weight of the cheetah is not small, some larger ones can even reach 70 kg, is the big cat no doubt, but its strength, but less than the level of the big cat, the typical "force" is not matched, especially after completing a hunt, the cheetah can simply accumulate into "five scum".
The biggest disadvantage of cheetahs is poor endurance, high-speed running lasts only a dozen seconds, and then they have to slow down or stop to rest, which is why cheetahs will give up decisively if they do not catch it after chasing their prey for hundreds of meters.
Hyenas on the grassland often look at this opportunity, and after the cheetah finishes hunting and catching the prey, it is too tired to eat and has to rest, and it snatches its prey away.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="34" > mimetic flat-headed brother, and the baby cheetah survives in the cracks</h1>
A female cheetah can give birth to 1-6 cubs per litter, with an average of 2-4 cubs. During the period of birth, the baby cheetah was almost completely inactive, and its eyes could not be opened, which can be said to be completely dependent on the female cheetah.
In the wild environment full of strong enemies, the cheetah mother knows that it is difficult to raise this group of dolls on her own strength, so it has adopted a strategy, that is, to build the nest of the child in the swamp, deep in the jungle, or in the grass area, making it difficult for other beasts to find, even if it knows, it is difficult to reach.
In the African steppe and southwest Asia, there is a small, but extremely fierce animal, people call it "flat-headed brother", the daily is not in the fight, or on the way to fight, this animal is the honey badger.
Honey badger is notorious for its toughness, because of its wide-eyed personality, coupled with soft and tough fur, it is difficult to bite, and the cost performance of preying on it is too low, so most predators are less willing to provoke this "thorn head". So in order to protect himself, the little cheetah took the initiative to imitate the "flat-headed brother" in an attempt to deceive all kinds of beasts.
"Flathead" honey badger
An animal mimics another animal, which is very common in nature, such as many moth insects, which will mimic poisonous snakes and scare away many predators; such as coyotes, which look very similar to striped hyenas, animal experts believe that they are imitating fierce striped hyenas.
The shape of the honey badger is very distinctive, the hair from the forehead to the tail is bright white, and the back of the cheetah has many cloak-like white hairs, which looks like a flat-headed brother in the sun, with this trick, it can scare off many predators who are afraid of the honey badger.
Of course, another advantage of the fluffy hair of the cheetah is that it looks relatively large, because the way most animals judge the strength of the opponent is based on the size of the body, the height is not enough hair to make up, to a certain extent, it can also achieve the effect of visual deception.