Despite the fact we haven’t been dealing with the care and feeding of cheetahs on a daily basis and our field work has been minimal, you can’t help but learn something when you are around so many dedicated researchers. DeWildt is the premier cheetah breeding center in the world. Like many such endeavors, DeWildt didn’t begin with that goal in mind, it just sort of happened. And along the way they increased the knowledge base about cheetahs significantly. The first king cheetah born in captivity was born at Wildt. Prior to that king cheetahs were thought to be either a separate species or a cheetah-leopard hybrid, but it is now known that the king cheetah is the result of a recessive gene carried by both parents.
And this brings us to the problem. Cheetahs nearly became extinct some 10 to 12 thousand years ago, about the time of the last Ice Age. In order to carry on the species, the relatively few individuals that survived were forced to mate with their own children. The result of such inbreeding for generation upon generation is a species with very little genetic variation, a condition that does not favor long-term species survival in the natural world. New advances in genetics have shown that any two cheetahs in the world are nearly identical twins. All it would take to eradicate cheetahs is a single disease for which they have no immunity.
Cheetahs have developed many specialized adaptations in their evolutionary history. They are light and agile, good for speed but not very good for protecting their cubs. They can run fast but only for short distances. They have a poor sense of smell and can see motion well but not detail. Their inbreeding has left the males nearly impotent, leaving them with low sperm counts and a high percentage of defective sperm. As habitat destruction, the greatest threat to wildlife, increases these traits may make it difficult for cheetahs to adapt to their new environment.
