Catfolk Species Accounts: Cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus)- North Africa and Southwest Asia

Description and Behavior
See full species account under SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA. Some authorities consider the cheetahs of North Africa and South-West Asia to be a single race, A.j. venaticus (Pocock 1939a, Ellerman and Morrison-Scott 1951), while others argue that North African populations have only become isolated from populations at the southern edge of the Sahara within the last century (K. de Smet in litt. 1993). Harrison and Bates (1991) label the distinction between Asian and African cheetahs dubious, while other anatomists consider Asian cheetahs to differ in morphology (Hemmer 1988) and pelage (pale fawn as opposed to sub-Saharan yellow, with spots more widely spaced: Heptner and Sludskii 1972, C. Groves in Karami [1992]). Dragesco-Joffé (1993) has observed that cheetahs of the open, sandy Saharan desert tend to be pale, with ochre rather than black spots, and muted "tear line" and tail rings. There is a rare form, locally called "white cheetah", which is exceptionally pale. However, cheetahs living around the black rocks of the Saharan mountain ranges tend to retain the black spots common to Sub-Saharan cheetahs. He has also reported that Saharan cheetahs tend to be rather small: two adult males killed in the Ténéré region of Niger had a shoulder height of only 65 cm, as compared to 85 cm for Sub-Saharan cheetahs (Bowland et al. 1993). The genetics of North African and South-West Asian cheetahs have yet to be investigated (Ammann 1993).
While the question of evolutionary relationships remains to be resolved, the main difference between cheetahs of this region and those south of the Sahara is that they are much more rare. Some of this rarity is natural, given the harsh conditions of sand desert. However, severe depletion of the cheetah’s ungulate prey base (East 1992a,b) and direct persecution are the major threats to the cheetah’s survival in this region.
There is little information available on the ecology of these cheetahs. Gazelles are generally indicated as the main prey species (Heptner and Sludskii 1972, Harrison and Bates 1991). In India, cheetahs took primarily blackbuck antelopes and chinkara gazelles, but were also known to attack nilgai antelope and domestic goats and sheep (Pocock 1939a). In Turkmenistan, cheetahs primarily took goitered gazelles, and their disappearance from this area is strongly associated with the decline of gazelles in the mid-1900s (Heptner and Sludskii 1972). In Iran, cheetahs outside protected areas with gazelle populations are reported to prey mainly on hares, an abundant food source because they are not usually taken by Muslim hunters (M. Karami in litt. 1990). Cheetahs in sub-Saharan Africa are known to take hares opportunistically. Whether cheetahs can subsist almost entirely on small prey needs to be investigated.

Dragesco-Joffé (1993) reported that cheetahs living in the Saharan mountains often hunt at night, when temperatures are cooler. He translates the Touareg name for cheetah as "one who advances slowly" -- a reversal of the popular perception of the cheetah as one of the fastest land mammals. The name is a tribute to the cheetah’s slow, patient stalking of gazelles in open terrain with very little cover. Dragesco-Joffé also states that Saharan cheetahs occasionally take ostrich and Barbary sheep.
Throughout this region and in Europe as well, captive cheetahs were kept by the nobility and trained to hunt, a practice dating back about 5,000 years to the Sumerians. In India, the Moghul Emperor, Akbar, is reputed to have collected some 9,000 animals in his lifetime. According to Pocock (1939a), the animals were better captured adult for this purpose, after having learned to hunt from their mother. By the early 1900s, however, Indian cheetahs had become so scarce that imports of African animals were required to sustain the princes’ stables (Divyabhanusinh 1984), as there was no success breeding them in captivity (see also Part II Chapter 5).