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Really Anne-marie...only for Moose????

There are a FEW of us who can really appreciate good cheetah photos...

no ! no ! also for you, for everybody, for Cheetahs's lovers
I mean... Moose's day

anne-marie,

they are gorgeous

Thanks for sharing these beauties with us

Anne-Marie: Thank you! I had all of Caracal's photos of that day, but not yours. My boys are so gorgeous!

Eagle Owl: I never really know what's going on with the cubs. It changes everyday. They're all destined for fabulous places though, where they're doing to do great work. Last I heard, Heathcliff was going back to Ann Van Dyke, and the others are going to be Americans.

It would be great to keep cubbies, but at Cheetah Outreach, it's our job to hand raise them to be good cheetah ambassadors. They're on loan to us, and in the next few months there will be a new batch of cubs to work with. I guess there's a possibility they'll still be around, but I said my goodbyes just in case...

My heart feel for you, Moose.

If Heathcliff is coming to the Ann van Dijk facility, I definitely will go and visit...and think of you... Maybe get a snap or two...

Please keep us updated.

Mafunyane, you too....

I've heard of the king cheetah sightings in kruger in 1979 but not recent, If the skin is just a mutation and normal cheetah's can produce a king cheetah then why aren't there many in kruger I understand that the mutation is rare but can it be extinct

That's a good question mattib Now that I think about it cheetah are a species that has sometime in the past gone through a genetic bottle neck meaning that they all share very similar genes. Its the perfect situation for a recessive trait to become more common

You have me interested now , Ill see what i can dig up.

Thanks oddesy, to me it seems that if the normal cheetah's who carried the genes were to die out this would happen. Suggesting that we have different cheetahs to day then we did before, when the king's were abundant. And congrats on your second kudu

The kings were never abundant, there are only a few sightings in the wild reported (less than 10).

Most of the ones in captivity were bred at the De Wildt Cheetah Centre.

The funny coat pattern is as a result of a recessive gene mutation. It needs to be present in both parents.

Thanks mattib

If you look at the genetics of the cheetah there is basically no genetic variability in the population ( had no idea exactly how little until now ), and that makes recessive genes more likely to appear. Im sure many of you did biology so will remember that you have a pair of genes , one paternal and one maternal that code for a specific characteristic. Now you get dominant (D) and recessive genes (d). The Allele which is the pair can either be homozygous( composed of two recessive genes or two dominant genes) or heterozygous (composed of one dominant and one recessive gene).

So homozygous recessive = dd
Then heterozygous=Dd

For a king cheetah to develop you have to have dd, but if any cheetah has only one parent with a recessive gene like in Dd it will appear normal as the normal coat pattern is the dominant gene. So this makes the king cheetah very unlikely to occur. To have a king cheetah as offspring you would either have to have a normal cheetah with a recessive gene (Dd) mating with another, Dd individual then there is a 25% chance. You could also produce a king cheetah by having a king cheetah , dd and mating it with an individual who carries the recessive gene, Dd then there is a 50% chance that one of he offspring will be a king cheetah.

Now the genetic variability in the species is almost non-existent . When this occurs its almost as if inbreeding is occurring and in captive populations of cheetah inbreeding depressions are common which means that recessive alleles occur more frequently and the depression part of the word refers to the fact that recessive genes are often responsible for harmful traits, abnormalities and diseases. So king cheetah then should occur more often but they dont So the only reasons I can come up with is that even before the species suffered from the genetic bottleneck (natural disaster) the gene responsible for producing a king cheetah must not have had a high frequency in the gene pool, possibly because the king cheetah was disadvantaged in some way, whether it be prey capture or female selection. So after the bottleneck the frequency of the required gene in the gene pool would have been even lower. The "inbreeding" in a sense of a DD and a DD individual would then have increased in frequency to such an extent that in wild populations it would not surprise me if the recessive gene is extinct.

Now I have it off my chest

oddesy

thanks oddessy, but how would the skin rinder his abilities this is very interesting . Also if a king cheetah mates with a normal cheetah, are the possibilites the same as before or will the gene be dominant because he is already a king cheetah

oddesy very interesting!

Matti, the different coat pattern may disadvantage it in terms of not being as camouflaged in its natural habitat combined with its innate and learnt hunting strategies. If you think about it, our big cats mostly have spots or rosettes or like the lion a single colour. In savanna the more stripy coat of the king cheetah may not work as well.

Also it may be a disadvantage because you get what is called sexual selection through female choice where the female of a species selects a mate based on certain features and the unusual coat may result in the male not being accepted to mate.

A normal cheetah can either be heterozygous so have one dominant gene for a normal coat and one recessive gene for a morphed coat (king cheetah) or be homozygous dominant (DD) the gene that codes for the king cheetah coat will never be dominant, the dominant gene is the one which shows up in the physical characteristics of the animal (phenotype). So if there is one normal cheetah gene, and one king cheetah gene (Dd) the cheetah will be normal, when they mate though the offspring can have a chance of being a king cheetah if they have two recessive genes (homozygous recessive) so then that will show up in the phenotype (physical appearance) of the animal but its still not the dominant gene.

There is a greater chance to produce king cheetah if a king cheetah and a normal cheetah carrying a recessive gene (d) mate

I was in Spiers in June 2009 and they had a King Cheetah there.