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The vernacular name "cheetah" is derived from Hindustani Urdu: چیتا and Hindi: चीता (ćītā). [3] This in turn comes from Sanskrit: चित्रय (Chitra-ya) meaning 'variegated', 'adorned' or 'painted'. [4] In the past, the cheetah was often called "hunting leopard" because they could be tamed and used for coursing. [5]
The earliest African cheetah fossils from the early Pleistocene have been found in the lower beds of the Olduvai Gorge site in northern Tanzania. [7]Not much was known about the East African cheetah's evolutionary story, although at first, the East and Southern African cheetahs were thought to be identical as the genetic distance between the two subspecies is low. [13]
An illustration of a cheetah cub (Acinonyx jubatus guttata) by Joseph Wolf in the Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London, 1867The Southern African cheetah was first described by German naturalist Johann Christian Daniel von Schreber in his book Die Säugethiere in Abbildungen nach der Natur mit Beschreibungen (The Mammals illustrated as in Nature with Descriptions), published in 1775.
Acinonyx is a genus within the Felidae family. [1] The only living species of the genus, the cheetah (A. jubatus), lives in open grasslands of Africa and Asia. [2]Several fossil remains of cheetah-like cats were excavated that date to the late Pliocene and Middle Pleistocene. [3]
The Northwest African cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus hecki), also known as the Saharan cheetah, is a cheetah subspecies native to the Sahara and the Sahel. It is listed as Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List. In 2008, the population was suspected to number less than 250 mature individuals. [2]
An illustration of cheetahs from Fahhad, Abyssania by Alfred Edmund Brehm, 1895 Cynailurus soemmeringii was the scientific name proposed by Leopold Fitzinger in 1855, when he described a live male cheetah brought by Theodor von Heuglin from Sudan’s Bayuda Desert in Kordofan to Tiergarten Schönbrunn in Vienna.
The Asiatic cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus venaticus) is a critically endangered cheetah subspecies currently only surviving in Iran. [1] Its range once spread from the Arabian Peninsula and the Near East to the Caspian region, Transcaucasus, Kyzylkum Desert and northern South Asia, but was extirpated in these regions during the 20th century.
Rank Common name Scientific name Image Weight range kg (pounds) Maximum weight kg (pounds) Length range (m) Maximum length (m) [a] Shoulder height (cm) Native range by continent(s)