: Cheetah :

A picture I drew of a coursing cheetah, walking on...it's own yeah...

well years and years back to the mongol times the Mongol emperor, Akbar The Great, kept over 1,000 cheetahs as pets. Since cheetahs are very nervous animals, they were caught as adults from the wild and captivated and soon trained for the sport of coursing. Coursing is where they dress the cheetah up, like this, and place a blind fold over it's eyes so it cannot see until the human found a ungulant such as a gazelle or what not. Once they have found their prey, the human would pull the blind fold off and the cheetah would chase down the gazelle. If the gazelle was caught, the cheetah got a piece of the animal later on that night, if the animal was not caught, the cheetah would go hungry. It sounds rather mean Even though he had a 1,000 cheetahs, they did not breed well in the captivity of the emperor's surroundings, and there for, no cheetah cubs were born...except maybe a liter, I'm not sure. Cheetahs don't breed well in captivity. Female cheetahs need to rough housing and constant nagging that male cheetah preform while trying to get the female to mate and or accept him. The rough housing stimulates ovulation in them and there for the breeding will almost be a sucess. In captivity, female cheetahs don't really get this kind of attention...there for... no cheetah cubs

When the Mongol emperor had his cheetahs coursing, I read this in one of my cheetah books, he said that one of his cheetahs lept over a 75 ft ravine while chasing a gazelle. Now...the longest leap a big cat has ever done that's been recorded was around 45-50 ft. And that was made by a snow leopard. Cougars are really good leapers as well, able to jump a good 40 ft from a stand still. Though a cheetah runs usually only at a speed of 45-55 mph while chasing most prey, the cheetah might have been able to jump further then a cougar from a stand still, beacuse the momentume it was building up from the high speed chase if it were running that speed or faster around 70 mph...but i'm not sure It might have been on of those super man cheetahs D! awww that would be so cute, a cheetah with ultimate cat power! ha!

Thanks for looking!

art and style (C) to me