Hunting success for the cheetah requires carefully stalking his prey. Then in a short burst, he can rev up to 70 miles an hour for the kill. This makes them the fastest mammal on earth. Forty mph is their normal speed. Speed is an important advantage for bringing down their favorite food antelopes.

A gazelle, which weighs about forty pounds, will sustain a cheetah for a day. Cheetahs must work in teams to bring down wildebeests, hartebeests and zebras. Cheetahs clench their jaws onto the victim’s windpipe which strangulates their victim.

Similar to most mammal species, it is the males that disperse. To new territories. Young female cheetahs occupy virtualy the same area as their mothers.

The females travel a range of 600 square miles, while the males’s established territory is 15 to 30 square miles. Females will travel as much as forty miles when following migratory herds of gazelles.

Normally females travel only with their cubs. Cheetah cubs rarely survive more than 3 months. Almost three-quarters of them become prey to other carnivores.

When a female is in estrus she leaves urine marks at an unusually high rate— at least once every ten minutes. Studies of other mammals indicate that urine of females in estrus contains hormones that males can smell to indicate a fertile female is nearby. Males will pick up that scent and seek out the females. The male will break into a fast walk with alternate yelping and will make stacatto purrs as he follows her trail. When the animals meet often the female will lay in the grass. The male usually mates instantly by grasping the back of her neck to hold her still and prevent her from walking away and then does the deed. This is a short courtship. They will stay together for the night and mate again. The cats then go their separate ways.

This courtship ritual is different than with another cat the lion. They mate over a period of several days and as often as four times an hour sometimes.

In the Serengeti National Park, there are at least a thousand chetahs. They fare well in this preserve. In other areas the cheetah population is halved every ten years due to poaching, pelt hunting, and limited habitat because of man made developments and farms. Extermination of these cats and loss of their natural prey also contributes to their decline.