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Cheetah
Open short grass plains and light savannah
Habitat
January to March
Best Viewing Season
Vulnerable
Conservation Status
Introduction
Cheetahs reign as Earth's fastest land animal, reaching speeds over 100 km/h across Tanzania's open plains in pursuit of gazelle. Unlike other big cats, they hunt by day across the open Serengeti landscape, making them one of the few high-action predator encounters you can realistically witness. The calving season concentrates both prey and hunters in the southern plains.
Behaviour & Facts
There is a moment, just before a cheetah runs, when she lifts her head from the grass and her whole body coils into one tense line. From the back of the vehicle you barely have time to register what is about to happen. She launches at sixty miles an hour across open ground, and twenty seconds later it is all over: a thin streak of dust, a single gazelle, and the fastest land animal on Earth catching her breath in the heat. The cheetah is the most specialised predator in Africa, and that specialisation is both its genius and its curse. Everything about its body is built for one short devastating sprint. The chest is oversized, the spine acts as a spring that doubles stride length, and semi retractable claws grip like running spikes. A long counterweight tail steers it through impossible turns at full speed. From a standing start, a cheetah can hit 100 km/h in under three seconds, faster than almost any production car. The cost of that engineering is fragility. A cheetah cannot afford to fight. Lions, leopards and even hyenas will kill her on sight, and a cheetah that breaks a bone in pursuit usually starves before it heals. So she lives by avoidance: hunting in the bright middle of the day when the bigger predators are sleeping, choosing open ground where she can see threats coming, abandoning kills the moment a tougher predator arrives.
Jack Fleckney - Legend Head Guide
Their social structure is unusual for cats. Females are strictly solitary, raising cubs alone across enormous home ranges that can span hundreds of square kilometres in the Serengeti. Males, however, form coalitions, usually brothers from the same litter, that hold smaller territories within those female ranges. A coalition of three males will outcompete singletons easily and sire most of the cubs in their area. A few facts travellers rarely know. Cheetahs do not roar. They chirp like birds, purr like a domestic cat, and yelp to call cubs across the grass. Genetically they passed through a severe population bottleneck around 10,000 years ago and are so inbred that any two cheetahs alive today can accept skin grafts from each other without rejection. The black tear marks from each inner eye are not decoration, they reduce glare the same way a baseball player smears greasepaint under his eyes. Tanzania's southern Serengeti and the bordering plains hold one of the most studied cheetah populations on Earth. The Serengeti Cheetah Project has tracked individuals continuously since 1974. If you watch a female with cubs on the Naabi Hill plains, your guide can probably tell you her mother's name and where in the Serengeti she was born.
Where to see
Cheetah
in Tanzania
Where to see cheetahs in Tanzania?
The southern Serengeti, especially around Ndutu, Naabi Hill and the Gol Kopjes, is the most reliable cheetah country in East Africa. The Ngorongoro Conservation Area holds strong populations along the western plains. Legend Expeditions plans southern Serengeti stays around this region on our migration safaris.
When is the best time for cheetahs?
January through March is the peak window in the southern Serengeti, when the calving season of the wildebeest brings high prey density to the open plains and daylight hunting is frequent. The dry season from June to October also gives good sightings with better vehicle access. Our guides time southern Serengeti camps to the calving herds.
Can you watch a cheetah hunt?
Yes, and it is one of the few high action wildlife events you have a realistic chance of seeing in person, because cheetahs hunt in daylight. A patient morning drive on the open plains gives you a good chance over a multi day safari. The hunt itself lasts under a minute, so you need to be ready before it starts.
How fast can a cheetah really run?
The fastest accurately measured wild cheetah hit 98 km/h, which is 61 mph, in pursuit of prey. They accelerate from a standing start to full speed in roughly three seconds, though they can only sustain that pace for around 400 metres before overheating. After a sprint they need fifteen to thirty minutes to recover.
Why are cheetahs endangered?
Cheetahs are exceptional sprinters but poor competitors. They are out muscled by lions, leopards and hyenas, lose roughly half their kills to scavengers, and lose most of their cubs to predation. Add habitat loss outside protected areas, and the global wild population has fallen to around 7,000. Tanzania holds one of the strongest strongholds.
Are cheetahs related to big cats?
Cheetahs are genetically closer to the puma than to lions, tigers or leopards. They cannot roar, they purr and chirp, and they are usually classified separately from the true big cats. This is why their behaviour is so different from a lion or a leopard on safari.
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