adult can take on board up to 30 lb of flesh in a sitting (equivalent to an adult human polishing off six legs of lamb) and survive on it for five days. Lions, vultures and hyenas steal half of all kills but cheetahs donât argue.
BUILT TO SPRINT
They know a single injury to their âfit-for-purposeâ body will doom them to starvation.
A female cheetah will sometimes bring back a live antelope calf to train her offspring. Cubs start hunting at eighteen months and, untrained, will often chase after completely inappropriate prey like buffalo.
âCheetahâ is originally a Hindi word, chita , which comes from the Sanskrit, chitraka , meaning âspeckledâ. There was confusion for a long time between cheetahs and leopards. When a medieval writer uses âleopardâ he usually means a cheetah. They were believed to be the illegitimate offspring of lions (which have manes) and âpardsâ (which were spotted). Cheetah cubs do have manes (it helps camouflage them in grass). Their Latin name, Acinonyx jubatus , means âfixed-claw with a maneâ.
Cheetahs can purr, chirp and yelp, but they canât roar .
In ancient Egypt, India and Persia, cheetahs were trained to hunt by humans. Rewarded with butter and taught to recognise fifteen vocal commands, they were taken out on horseback, wearing hoods like falcons, and then set after antelope.
They are notoriously difficult to breed in captivity because the female needs to be chased by several males before she can ovulate. The sixteenth-century Mughal emperor, Akbar the Great, kept over a thousand cheetahs but managed only one litter. The next cheetah born in captivity wasnât until 1956.
Chimpanzee
The thinking manâs ape
I t is almost impossible to discuss the history of our nearest living animal relative without talking about ourselves. In 2002, a series of British TV adverts featuring chimpanzees dressed as a family of humans ended after forty-six years â the longest-running advertising campaign of all time. Their undeniable charm was based on a fallacy: that chimpanzees are like cheerful, uncoordinated human children. The irony is that the opposite is probably closer to the truth: that humans are chimps who didnât grow up. We got smart instead.
âChimpanzeeâ is from the Bantu kivili-chimpenze, meaning âmockmanâ. It was first used by Europeans in 1738, although sixteenth-century Portuguese explorers called them âpygmiesâ .
Adult chimps ( Pan troglodytes ) may not be much taller than a ten-year-old but they weigh twice as much and have five times the upper body strength of an adult human. Chimps can recognise themselves in a mirror, vocalise and use sophisticated gestures to communicate. Young chimps laugh when playful or being tickled. They appear to express emotions. They donât have the physiology for speech, but they can learn some human sign language â though without grammar or syntax. They can use a variety of tools â some âfishâ for termites with twigs; others crack nuts with rocks or sharpen spears with their teeth. They learn from one another. To this extent, different groups of chimps have their own âculturesâ.
In particular, their sister species the bonobos ( Pan paniscus ), only identified in 1929, seem to approach the common problems of food distribution and reproduction from a much jauntier angle. Whereas chimp groups are run by a team of dominant males, bonobos are like a feminist hippy collective, with sexual contact â male-female, female-female, adult-child â used as the universal social solvent. Anything that arouses the interest ofmore than one bonobo results in sex. Unlike common chimps, bonobos often have sex face to face; like them, the males have huge testicles, because the females of both species are serially promiscuous. Itâs a sperm war: the more sex, the more partners, the better chance of raising your own
BUILT TO SPRINT
They know a single injury to their âfit-for-purposeâ body will doom them to starvation.
A female cheetah will sometimes bring back a live antelope calf to train her offspring. Cubs start hunting at eighteen months and, untrained, will often chase after completely inappropriate prey like buffalo.
âCheetahâ is originally a Hindi word, chita , which comes from the Sanskrit, chitraka , meaning âspeckledâ. There was confusion for a long time between cheetahs and leopards. When a medieval writer uses âleopardâ he usually means a cheetah. They were believed to be the illegitimate offspring of lions (which have manes) and âpardsâ (which were spotted). Cheetah cubs do have manes (it helps camouflage them in grass). Their Latin name, Acinonyx jubatus , means âfixed-claw with a maneâ.
Cheetahs can purr, chirp and yelp, but they canât roar .
In ancient Egypt, India and Persia, cheetahs were trained to hunt by humans. Rewarded with butter and taught to recognise fifteen vocal commands, they were taken out on horseback, wearing hoods like falcons, and then set after antelope.
They are notoriously difficult to breed in captivity because the female needs to be chased by several males before she can ovulate. The sixteenth-century Mughal emperor, Akbar the Great, kept over a thousand cheetahs but managed only one litter. The next cheetah born in captivity wasnât until 1956.
Chimpanzee
The thinking manâs ape
I t is almost impossible to discuss the history of our nearest living animal relative without talking about ourselves. In 2002, a series of British TV adverts featuring chimpanzees dressed as a family of humans ended after forty-six years â the longest-running advertising campaign of all time. Their undeniable charm was based on a fallacy: that chimpanzees are like cheerful, uncoordinated human children. The irony is that the opposite is probably closer to the truth: that humans are chimps who didnât grow up. We got smart instead.
âChimpanzeeâ is from the Bantu kivili-chimpenze, meaning âmockmanâ. It was first used by Europeans in 1738, although sixteenth-century Portuguese explorers called them âpygmiesâ .
Adult chimps ( Pan troglodytes ) may not be much taller than a ten-year-old but they weigh twice as much and have five times the upper body strength of an adult human. Chimps can recognise themselves in a mirror, vocalise and use sophisticated gestures to communicate. Young chimps laugh when playful or being tickled. They appear to express emotions. They donât have the physiology for speech, but they can learn some human sign language â though without grammar or syntax. They can use a variety of tools â some âfishâ for termites with twigs; others crack nuts with rocks or sharpen spears with their teeth. They learn from one another. To this extent, different groups of chimps have their own âculturesâ.
In particular, their sister species the bonobos ( Pan paniscus ), only identified in 1929, seem to approach the common problems of food distribution and reproduction from a much jauntier angle. Whereas chimp groups are run by a team of dominant males, bonobos are like a feminist hippy collective, with sexual contact â male-female, female-female, adult-child â used as the universal social solvent. Anything that arouses the interest ofmore than one bonobo results in sex. Unlike common chimps, bonobos often have sex face to face; like them, the males have huge testicles, because the females of both species are serially promiscuous. Itâs a sperm war: the more sex, the more partners, the better chance of raising your own
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