THE CHEETAH (by Hajer ben Salah et Linda Ishtar Ben salem) 6éme B PRESENTATION • The cheetah is a large mammal of the felid family living in Africa and West Asia. The cheetah has a thin appearance, with long slender legs and a face with a short muzzle marked by two black traces starting from the eyes. Its coat is entirely spotted with black on a very light beige background the little ones are provided with a short mane that disappears in adulthood. It is considered the fastest land animal in the world MORPHOLOGY • The muscular body resembles that of a slender greyhound, almost thin, with long legs contrasting sharply with most other big cats Its chest is deep and its waist narrow. The bones are light and the spine, extremely flexible, allows it to project its hind limbs very far The claws of the cheetah are not totally retractile or hooked, unlike those of other felines This peculiarity allows it to run very fast PHYSICAL PERFORMANCE • The cheetah travels some seven or eight meters in a single stride and completes four strides per second. This makes it one of the fastest quadruped mammals. • a cheetah in captivity reached a record speed of 112 km/h16 • When the cheetah arrives close enough to its prey, it often happens to make a simple fang and thus, to unbalance it so that it makes a fatal fall due to the speed ALIMENTATION •Its diet is carnivorous, mainly consisting of mammals weighing less than 50 kg, including several varieties of antelopes, such as gazelles, springboks, peleas, impalas, small kudus, cobes, young wildebeest and topis, steenboks, ourébis, but also young warthogs and ostriches, hares, rabbits, and sometimes guinea fowls HABITAT • There are several isolated populations of cheetahs, in Africa as in the Qattara Depression in Egypt, and in Southwest Asia. About 50 individuals live in Iran, in Khorasan, where they are the subject of a preservation campaign The presence of the Asian cheetah has been reported several times in Pakistan in Balochistan, without this being confirmed. THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION
