Felines are recognized as beautiful, and in the felines, if you want to choose the most beautiful, different people may have different answers, such as some people will choose snow leopards, white hair is decorated with black markings, like snow elves; others will choose male lions, a thick mane is more domineering; and I prefer cheetahs, its limbs are slender and beautiful, elegant and beautiful.
Cheetahs are mainly distributed in Africa and West Asia, which were once widespread in these areas, but now the habitat of cheetahs has shrunk to 9% of the original, especially in Asia, which has long been endangered, and only a small number exist in Iran.
Cheetah distribution map
Speaking of cheetahs, the most impressive thing is its speed, cheetah is the fastest animal on land, although the speed of hunting is usually about 64 kilometers per hour, but the instantaneous speed of sprinting can reach 112 kilometers per hour, which makes it far ahead of other animals.
Relying on the speed advantage, the cheetah can catch up with all species on the grassland, so it is much easier to prey on ungulates than any kind of large predator such as lions and hyenas, and it also has the best of the big cats with a 58% predation success rate, becoming the veritable "king of hunting" among the big cats.
cheetah
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > cheetah counts as a big cat? </h1>
Some people say that the method of judging modern cats as "big cats" or "kittens" mainly depends on whether they will roar like lions and tigers, while others say that only members of the leopard subfamily can be considered big cats, and strictly speaking cheetahs cannot be considered big cats.
Is this really the case? In fact, "big cat" is just a conventional name, the rules of division are judged according to body size, the cheetah's hyoid bone has been completely ossified, can not make a loud roar, also belongs to the members of the cat subfamily, but it and the mountain lion also belong to one of the big cats, after all, some larger cheetahs can weigh more than 70 kg.
puma
In fact, whether it is by sound, or by the classification of the feline system to divide the ownership of large cats, it is not very accurate, such as the snow leopard in the leopard genus, which is larger and recognized as a big cat, but its hyoid bone ossification is lower than that of a cheetah, but higher than that of a lion tiger, so it can neither emit a lion-tiger roar, nor can it emit a kitten-like "purring sound", but can only emit a sound in between, similar to panting. In addition, although the clouded leopard belongs to the subfamily leopard, it is small and does not belong to the ranks of large cats.
Clouded leopard
Cheetahs were originally a separate subfamily called the Cheetah subfamily, but after revision, the cheetah subfamily was abolished, and the cheetah was also classified into the cat subfamily, becoming a species under the mountain lion lineage.
Although the cheetah and the cougar are very different in appearance, one is covered with spots, the appearance is higher, and the other is a pure color, but do you know? Cheetahs and mountain lions "separated" for a short time, only a few million years, they still have a common ancestor during the Miocene, until more than 6.7 million years ago, cheetahs and mountain lions separated, each evolved in different directions, and finally became what we see now.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > how is the "King of Hunting" made? </h1>
In 2012, a research institute conducted statistics on the hunting behavior of cheetahs on the Serengeti grassland, recording 192 hunting behaviors of cheetahs, of which 114 were successful, indicating that its predation success rate was 58%, and many people may have no concept of this value, after all, there is no reference comparison.
Among cats, 58% is actually a very high value, knowing that the kalahari leopard predation success rate is only 14%, and the leopard in northeast Namibia will be slightly higher, but only 38%.
The success rate of a single lion is only 17%-19%, even if it is three joint hunting, it is only 25%; as a well-known "lone hunter", the tiger's predation success rate is not high, and in a study of the Siberian tiger in the Russian Far East, the tiger's success rate when preying on deer was 38%.
The black-footed cat, the predation champion of the feline, is only two percentage points more than the cheetah, which is 60%, which shows how high the hunting success rate of the cheetah is in the cat family, which is enough to win the crown of the big cat.
Cheetahs prey
In 2012, some scholars measured an 11-year-old female cheetah named "Sarah", which ran 100 meters in only 5.59 seconds, setting a world record, so this cheetah is also known as the fastest cheetah on the earth.
Speed is crucial for the hunting activities of cheetahs, in the African savannah, there are a variety of strong predators, they are either strong in their own strength, or in groups to gather the strength of individuals, even most of the herbivores, are in large groups, and cheetahs to survive in their "cracks", must have "two brushes", and speed is its biggest trump card.
A cheetah on the run
Relying on speed advantages, cheetahs can kill most small and medium-sized ungulates, and can also rush into the herd to pick up wildebeest cubs and run without being injured by adult wildebeest. Sometimes we can't help but wonder, why do cheetahs run so fast? This is actually related to their unique construction.
We can observe the entire external form of cheetahs, and we will find that they are tall and light, their muscles are slender but strong, and their long and flexible spines are obviously born for sprinting. In addition, cheetahs have larger nasal passages than those of the average predator, which allows them to ensure sufficient oxygen intake when running at high speeds.
Of course, speed alone is not enough, in order to become the "king of hunting" in the big cat, the cheetah must also have some other skills, that is, how to maintain body balance when running at high speed, have a high degree of flexibility, and always be able to see the prey.
Anyone who has had experience in sprinting may find that the faster we run, the worse the steering ability, and the vision will become blurred, unable to see a certain object, while the cheetah does not have this trouble, mainly due to its unique inner ear structure.
A research paper in the journal Science Reports revealed to us the unique structure of cheetahs' inner ears that allow them to maintain their brain balance while running at high speeds, and their eyes can always stare at their prey.
The scientists analyzed the skulls of 21 cats and found that the cheetah's vestibular system accounted for a larger proportion of the inner ear than any other cat, between 38% and 43.7%, while most of the feline vestibular system accounted for 32.4% of the inner ear, such a difference makes the cheetah more able to maintain brain balance and have better visual stability than other cats, thus ensuring that the cheetah will not lose its prey even if it runs at high speed.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > hidden dangers under high-speed motion</h1>
The world is fair, since it gives you such a good speed, it is bound to take something from other aspects, in fact, it is true, although the cheetah has a speed that other animals cannot match, this speed also makes it the "king of hunting" among the big cats, but it also buries huge hidden dangers, directly affecting its daily life.
It turns out that although the cheetah is fast, but it can not maintain a long time of high-speed running, its endurance is extremely poor, if you try strenuous exercise, it will make the cheetah's respiratory system and internal circulation system overloaded, and the heat accumulated in the body can not be quickly discharged in a short period of time, the direct consequence is "tired and collapsed", and even life-threatening.
Cheetahs feeding
In many documentaries, we often see a phenomenon that when a cheetah conducts a hunt, if the prey runs away, it will not catch up again, mainly because it needs to take a long rest after a hunt in order to recover its physical strength.
In the same way, after completing a hunt, the cheetah will not eat immediately, which is not to say that it is not hungry, but after running at high speed, it almost does not even have the strength to eat, and must rest for a period of time before it can start eating.
Therefore, in reality, some predators such as spotted hyenas and brown hyenas will often look at such opportunities to rob cheetahs, and in normal times, cheetahs have the ability to protect food, but if they just complete the hunting operation, they can only watch the hyenas snatch away the prey that is difficult to catch.
Brown hyenas robbed the cheetah of food
10% is the probability of the cheetah's food being robbed, which means that every 10 times the cheetah catches prey, there will be a prey being snatched away, which is indeed tragic enough. However, the biggest problem is not this, but in terms of life safety, if the cheetah has carried out a predatory behavior, it happens to encounter a powerful predator such as a lion, it is very likely that it will not be able to escape; in addition, because the cheetah runs at high speed, if it has not succeeded in three consecutive hunting, then there will be a greater probability of death.
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