Various problems make it difficult for the cheetahs, which are one of the flagship species of the animal world in Africa. What causes their precarious status, and why is the alarming and unimproving situation of cheetahs in the world created? Special review
Nadav Levy, Galileo
A few years ago I suggested to the safari drivers in Kenya to collect their observations and write down the location points of what they saw, to examine whether they discovered cheetahs before, during and after they hunted and feasted on the prey, and to examine the composition of the prey, the duration of the hunt, and so on, and after all that, to publish their findings in writing - A scientific period.
I was always present in their sparkling eyes, always tracing where my knowledge of their wild animals came from. Unfortunately, they always claimed to me that there was no one among them who could gather the information, and I always told them that they were just underestimating their importance or being lazy.
Recently, researchers in the Serengeti Park in Tanzania are implementing a new research method similar to my proposal, with the aim of better preserving the cheetahs in the field, and after reading what exactly they are doing, I have renewed hope for improving the collection of information, in a way that may contribute to saving the cheetahs from complete extinction.
Many studies have so far focused on the way of life of cheetahs in the wild, on the reproductive limitations of female cheetahs in captivity in South Africa and North America, and on trying to understand what the factors are that link to the accepted theories about the existence of a genetic bottleneck that afflicted the cheetahs only about one thousand years ago, and which has not since managed to recover to this day.
Who are the cheetahs?
For many years, scientists have believed that cheetahs are gentle predators from surviving in the world in view of the competition they have with their enemies and super predators, because of their too great genetic proximity to those which exposes them to catastrophes, because of their over-specialization in hunting their dwindling victims, and because of modern eco-tourism which supposedly should have helped them in their struggles for existence, but in fact does not consider them enough. In this article I will present the main problems that make it difficult for cheetahs as one of the flagship species of the animal world in Africa, their precarious status and the alarming and unimproving situation of cheetahs in the world.
Cheetahs are the fastest terrestrial predators, belonging to the series of terrestrial predators, which includes the cat family, which includes 37 species. Many of us call them cheetahs, which is their English name. The cheetah belongs to an intermediate group between dogs and cats in terms of its hunting habits: on the one hand, its claws are always pulled out and not tucked in like other cat species, and on the other hand, its pursuit of its prey resembles the typical behavior of canine species. The cheetah is the fastest mammal on earth, called "Cheetah" (Cheetah), as its Indian name (Chita) accepted in English, and the meaning of its scientific-Latin name Acinonyx (Acinonyx) which means "having the non-kinetic (non-retractable) claw".
The species name jubatus means "with the mane". The cheetah is a large mammal that was also called "the spotted sphinx" by the painter and naturalist Joy Adamson who became famous with her husband George for breeding lions in Kenya ("Freedom was born" and so on) in the sixties. Cheetahs were also called "the dotted wind", "the predator that almost flies" for its speed, "tiger-pharaoh", "the elegant deviation", and sometimes "concert of dots".
Gentle running machine
The cheetah became famous for being a perfect running machine, a model for utilizing savannah areas and cereal fields, including huge herds of Persians. A comparison between the cheetah and the tiger reveals two felines of similar weight, but the distribution of the weight is different and the "architecture" is different: a fast, long-legged sprinter that steps in front of the tiger that sneaks up and pounces on its prey. The tiger hunts larger prey than the cheetah, and can deposit its prey, as much as its body weight, in the heights of a tree, a kind of "safe" that keeps the "treasure" away from the teeth of the large carcass robbers, lions and spotted hyenas.
But the cheetah does not act like that. It evokes deep emotions in man due to its delicacy, speed and due to the genetic bottleneck problems of its wild populations in the world. The cheetah impresses with its "proud" gait with its raised shoulders, its ability to break through when running, its long legs, its narrow and thin body, and its sharp claws and pulled out ankles, and its predation based on a fast chase. The pad of the toes (five toes on the front leg and 4 on the back leg), normally contains the claws in special skin pockets in the foot to keep them sharp, it is hard and sharp as an adaptation to withstand the rotational load often required when accelerating after the prey.
The heart, lungs, adrenal glands and vascular system - all of these are particularly large, and increase the chances of a successful hunt. Unlike the other cats, his claws are pulled out of the skin pockets when hunting and even climbing, and they give him the suitability for hunting in open plains. The cheetah's teeth are small, not adapted to killing large prey, and are another modification related to its evolutionary processes for speed. His body structure is optimally adapted for about 360 meters of strenuous running, for a maximum body temperature during exertion of about 40.6 degrees Celsius, and for chases that reach even about 500 meters for a successful hunt.
It is possible that some of the adaptations of the Garnet deer, the Rami Baisa, and the Gernock (the giraffe deer) to higher body temperatures are related to the evolutionary development that the biological species that survived in the presence of a predator such as the cheetah and the like underwent.
Cat as a racing model
The cheetah's legs are longer and its body is thinner compared to the tiger and also its round head is much smaller than it. Compared to the diversity of tigers in their areas of distribution, the cheetahs are very imaginative in all their areas of distribution. His fur is in shades of orange and yellow, on his face there is a "stripe of tears" that descends from each of the eyes to the corners of the mouth. The face models are very important in camouflage in tall grass landscapes. His head is round and small and his skull is small and light, his ears are short and his teeth are narrow.
This is, in general terms, a racing model on the feline production line that required changes and deviations from the basic feline structure: its body is also elongated and adapted to large steps. Its silhouette is aerodynamic. A look at the enormous chest - a receptacle for high-volume lungs - reveals a highly developed heart pump and blood vessels, relative to the size of the body, which enable a very fast pursuit.
Elongation of legs, reduction of skull and development of chest are characteristic of racing dogs. His claws are dull, half drawn and immobile, except in the first months of his life. For the rest of the cats, the claws are sharp, enclosed in a unique leather sheath and can be pulled out, as an adaptation for running by improving the grip on the ground, similar to metal nails ("spikes") in runners' shoes, for cheetahs the size of the step in running exceeds seven meters!
Its running speed is about 100 km/h (in experiments it was found that its speed is about 90, 110, and up to 130 km/h!), and indeed, the structure of the cheetah, which is, as mentioned, the fastest terrestrial predator in the world, is considered a marvel of creation: a delicate balance between speed and power, between ability To get the best runners of the plains, and a structure massive enough to abort, kill and dismember, but not too massive so as not to make running difficult. The "conflict" between speed and strength detracted from the strength and diminished the cheetah's ability to compete with other large predators. Sacrificing strength on the altar of speed costs the cheetah in many cases in losing its prey to predators, super-predators and even predators "stronger" than it, due to its inability to fight them.
Origin and distribution in our region
The origin of the current cheetahs (Acinonyx jubatus) in Namibia or in countries close to it in Africa, according to the prevalence and distribution of their main prey, the gazelle deer, which are known for their distribution in the desert belt of the Old World and for their preference for deserts. A stuffed cheetah in poor condition from Zarka-Mein, Jordan, in the collection of Hav Schmitz in Jerusalem, was transferred to the Zoological Museum of Tel Aviv University. In Israel, only one definite sighting from 1959 is recorded.
Estimate, and cheetahs as pets
In 1900, from Africa to India, 25-20 thousand individuals were estimated in the wild, and since then they have been decreasing. About 10 years ago, their number was estimated between 9,000 and about 12,000 individuals, and about 1,160 individuals in about 170 fenced zoos, breeding centers and safaris. Cheetahs have been humans' pets for about 5,000 years. Hieroglyphic paintings showed that man often participated in royal hunting expeditions, and they were called "Pharaoh-tigers" and were popular as "hunting dogs".
They were semi-domesticated by Indians and Arabs, and for hundreds of years the princes and emperors of the Mazat kept them in their palaces. Genghis Khan and Kublai Khan kept hundreds of individuals as "hunting tigers" that were caught in the wild when they were adults, and because they believed that only after reaching sexual maturity could they be "trusted" to learn to hunt properly; The ability to tame them in a very short time made them docile animals. Thousands of cheetahs were taken in the wild in Asia alone, and most of them died without leaving offspring. The most famous among the cheetah owners was King "Akbar the Great", the Mogul emperor - who ruled India in the 16th century for about 49 years and kept about 9,000 cheetahs in his palaces!
Evolution, origin and sorting
According to one theory, the ancestors of cheetahs passed (about 5.0-3.5 million years ago) through the Bering Straits from North America to Europe, and spread in Asia and Africa, so that fossils of 7 species about a million years old were discovered, among them giant cheetahs, about two to three times their size the current The oldest fossil is the giant cheetah, found in France, which is the size of a lion.
Until about 10 thousand years ago, a few species existed in North America, but they became extinct along with 75% of the mammals at the end of the late Pleistocene period, with the exception of the existing cheetah. According to this view, a small population in Africa has since spread to Asia again. The cougar (Felis concolor), from North America was similar to the cheetah that disappeared from the world only about 12 thousand years ago. Accordingly, the future of cheetahs in Africa and Asia is clouded.
According to a second theory, there is an incredible genetic identity between the cheetahs themselves, resulting from specialization in hunting in the population of origin in Namibia, and there is genetic evidence that they did not mix with other populations in East Africa and Iran. Therefore, it is speculated that climatic events probably left only one pair in South-West Africa, and in any case less than ten individuals.
Genetic over-identity is considered to be the reason responsible to some extent for the considerable mortality of offspring, for their slaughter by stronger competing predators who stole food from them due to their lack of ability to compete against them, and because of high mortality in captivity. Genetic identity prevents adaptation to a changing environment and accelerates the rate of extinction. More offspring died in zoos than in the wild, and the first cub was born in captivity in modern times in 1956. It is hoped that transplanting cheetah embryos into reproductive systems of domesticated cats or non-endangered species will help.
Existential survival problems - mutations, royal shows and genetic bottlenecks
The royal cheetah, discovered in 1926 in Zimbabwe, also lives in Botswana and South Africa. It is characterized by short and prominent longitudinal stripes compared to the usual spots of the cheetah (spotted). Some identified it as a different species called Acinonyx rex, but overall it is a different occurrence based on a recessive allele present in the South African subspecies, although there is no overall agreement on the definition of subspecies in cheetahs. Attempts to increase the frequency of this show are intended to promote restitution to nature in an isolated area in the south of the continent.
The main problems of cheetahs are: "inbreeding", loss of habitats and the formation of fragmented habitats due to variable or limited availability of food sources, and the man who systematically killed them. Protected and declared areas did not improve the situation. As well as the conventional nature conservation policy, which does not dilute individuals (culling) in protected areas. This policy in areas rich in wild animals in Africa encourages the reproduction of super-predators, who tail cheetahs, and easily take over their prey, teaching us that this conservation policy should have been changed, and we did not do so.
Global conservation efforts
In the past, Charles Darwin, the father of the theory of evolution, pointed out the importance of the genetic diversity of animals in order to adapt to conditions of dryness, cold, temperature changes, diseases, parasites and viruses, and suggested that individuals adapted to their environment will produce more offspring compared to less adapted ones.
The study of reproductive patterns in captivity revealed that a female should not be kept together with a male because she does not come into heat, but most zoos and breeding centers have not heard of this, and in the wild the reproduction of cheetahs is quite reasonable. In captivity, females had difficulty reaching estrus and were not observed mating, but since 1980, zoos are no longer allowed to capture females from the wild.
A study on the difficulties of cheetahs to reproduce in captivity, revealed that they should be kept separately and brought together only when the female is mated, and only later was this also discovered in the wild. The main reasons for reproductive failures of cheetahs stemmed from low sperm concentrations and fertility levels, and the survival of cubs in captivity is about 40% lower, compared to the reproduction of other cat species in captivity. At times, the size of the normal was even higher than normal and also the asymmetric skull indicated a loss of genetic variation and "inbreeding".
Biologists have even discovered that males have extremely low sperm emission, and that about 70% of their sperm are not of normal size and function. They also found that skin grafts between different cheetahs were accepted too easily, another fact indicating extremely limited genetic diversity. If in humans rejection of a foreign transplant is detected within about ten days, in cheetahs rejection of the transplanted parts was not noticed at all.
In a zoo in England, the breeding success was evident as a result of mixing genes of two subspecies. To increase the genetic diversity, dozens of additional cheetahs that were captured in the wild (and hastened the disappearance of cheetahs from Asia!) were transferred to breeding centers and zoos, and began to be moved from place to place. The result: increased reproduction, and the birth of 55 residents and 180 puppies in 11 countries, and 29 breeding centers or cages. However, the mortality rate remains high and about 50 of them died under the age of 6 months.
The number of cheetahs in North America reached about 200 individuals about 20 years ago, and in the DRAP hundreds of them were bred in breeding farms near Pretoria. Veterinarians even went to Namibia to find out how to increase genetic diversity in cheetahs. The main effort there has since focused on strengthening contact with ranchers and reporting disease in captivity, but little of this has been made public. Despite the accumulated information and knowledge to understand the reproductive indices needed to increase the number of breeding individuals, it was finally proposed to solve the problem by transplanting embryos into surrogate females from other biological species; Success has been reported with other problem species. The future of cloning as a tool to increase the number of cheetahs is unclear.
The global conservation approach
The cheetahs were included in Appendix 1 of the "international convention that refers to the list of organisms in global danger of extinction". 166 countries have signed the convention since October 2004. In 1974, when it became clear that the information about cheetahs in the wild was scarce, they founded the "Serengeti Cheetah Research Project" in Tanzania with the decision to collect information about the gentle predator, and later, took several well-known conservation organizations under their auspices the study of the causes of the zero reproduction rate of the cheetahs in captivity, and began to finance long-term studies in the wild.
Today, the "Society for the Preservation of Wild Animals" and the "Zoological Society", based in London, focus on the study of cheetahs in the Serengeti. By the fall of 2004 information had been gathered on about 500 different cheetahs in the Serengeti alone! The main problem that appears now is an excess of safari cars around the cheetahs in the wild.
Computer models, tourism and the Internet
The Serengeti National Park in Tanzania in Africa has been considered for many years the best area in the world for watching and researching cheetahs, and is the main infrastructure for information about the problems and customs of cheetahs. In the pioneering project called Cheetah Watch, Sarah Durant (Durant) and John Shamekunde (Shamekunde) from the Tanzanian National Parks succeeded in 2001 in enlisting the help of tourists who come to see cheetahs, and who desire to see them while hunting. They were asked to provide information and photographs, and with the help of computer models, they were able to identify them, and the tourists, who were enthusiastic about the idea, are helping the research.
In the first two years, about 30,000 observations were collected in northern Tanzania alone. Hundreds of tourists from the world used about 70 safari companies, and provided about 400 location points of different groups of cheetahs who are tolerant of each other, a new and hitherto unknown aspect of research. The models were developed by Conservation Research Ltd., based in Cambridge, England, and aided in the rapid identification of digital photographs, allowing the specific cheetah to be scanned and located quickly and automatically on its point model.
* The author is a zoologist and ecologist, researcher, lecturer and safari tour guide mainly in Africa, specializing in the study of modern nature conservation problems, and in the study of awareness and emotions in "sentient" organisms
