There are only 9,000 to 12,000 cheetahs in Africa, and about 10 percent of them live in captivity. Protecting cheetahs became a task for people, especially in Africa.
One of the reasons for the decrease in the number of cheetahs is the decrease in the number of herbivores, such as antelopes and wildebeests, the distribution area has decreased, and the food resources of cheetahs have decreased; the other point is that the ecological environment of cheetahs has been divided and isolated by human villages, roads and some other human activity areas; the third reason is that due to the trade in cheetah skins, especially international trade, due to the implementation of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, this trade has been restricted, but this smuggling still exists. These smugglers poaching cheetahs are also a big threat to the survival of cheetahs.
In nature, cheetahs are often defeated by larger cats, such as lions, or may be bitten to death by lions. The survival rate of leopard cubs is very low, and two-thirds of leopard cubs are bitten by lions, hyenas, etc. before the age of one or starve to death due to lack of food
The cheetah is the fastest animal in the world to run on land, reaching speeds of up to 115 kilometers per hour. If the human sprint world champion and the cheetah compete in the 100-meter race, the cheetah can let the world champion run 60 meters first, and it is the cheetah who reaches the finish line, not the sprint world champion.
But it should be noted that since the cheetah runs so fast, it is a test for it to the respiratory and circulatory systems of its entire body. When it runs at speeds of more than 115 kilometers, its respiratory and circulatory systems are overloaded. Because the cheetah can not drain the accumulated heat at once, it is easy to have symptoms of collapse, so the cheetah can generally only sprint a few hundred meters, and it slows down.
Otherwise, its body will overheat, and then it will collapse. So this kind of running is very hurtful, sometimes it is the cheetah that catches the prey, because it has just run too fast, so it can't eat at that time, it has to take a break, or gasp for breath before it can start eating.
Cheetahs are carnivores, and their prey is mainly small and medium-sized ungulates, including Thomson gazelles, Gretel's gazelles, impalas, small wildebeests, etc., which will also attack zebras when food is scarce, and ostriches are also often preyed by cheetahs. Sneaking up to a distance of 10 to 30 meters from the prey, and then hunting the prey, the speed of hunting can reach a maximum speed of 120 kilometers per hour, and only one foot lands on the ground, but it can only run for 3 minutes at most, and the physiological structure of the time makes the cheetah must slow down, otherwise they will die due to overheating.
It is usually possible to hunt the prey within 1 minute, and if the cheetah hunt fails, it will be a waste of physical strength. Roughly only 1 out of 6 hunts will be successful. After the cheetah has just caught the prey, it can continue to bite the neck of the prey with its mouth until it loses its breath and breathes heavily in the nose during the period, but the physical condition of the cheetah after running at full strength is weak and takes tens of minutes to recover.
As a result, it was even more impossible to meet the African Jackal, and had to give up the prey in hand; but there were extreme cases where a cheetah hunted and then gambled to drive an African Jackal away. A cheetah who is unsuccessful in hunting 5 times in a row or whose prey is snatched away may starve to death because he no longer has the strength to hunt.