Habitat & Diet
Diet
Cheetahs eat small antelope including springbok, steenbok, duikers, impala and gazelles, as well as the young of larger animals including warthog, kudu, hartebeest, oryx, roan and sable. They also eat game birds and rabbits.About half a cheetah's prey chases are successful. If successful in catching an animal, cheetahs suffocate their prey by clamping down on the animal's windpipe. The jaw structure of a cheetah can create a vise-like grip. Very small animals, like hares, are killed by a simple bite through the skull. But whatever the meal, large or small, cheetahs eat quickly, as they can be bullied away from their catch by lions, hyenas, and sometimes groups of vultures. Cheetahs lose about 50 percent of their food this way. Cheetahs have unusually clean eating habits: they do not return to their kill nor do they eat carrion. They leave the bones and entrails of their prey. At six weeks, the young are strong enough to follow the hunt and when they are about six months old the mother will capture live prey for them to practice killing.
Habitat
Cheetahs inhabit a broad section of Africa including areas of North Africa, the Sahel, eastern and southern Africa. Over the past 50 years, cheetahs have become extinct in at least 13 countries, and they are most prevalent in Kenya and Tanzania in east Africa, and Namibia and Botswana in southern Africa. The Asiatic cheetah is known to survive in Iran, but is critically endangered. Cheetahs thrive in areas with vast expanses of land where prey is abundant. In Namibia, cheetahs live in a variety of habitats, including grasslands, savannahs, dense vegetation and mountainous terrain. As human development expands in to their preferred habitat, cheetahs can now commonly be found on commercial farms.