page_title: Northeast African cheetah
section_title: Tamed cheetahs
hierarchical_section_title: Northeast African cheetah / Conservation / Tamed cheetahs
caption_attribution_description: Original caption&#58; "(Ramses II) Ritorna trionfante sul carro, preceduto da schiavi africani" English: Egyptian chariot, accompanied by a cheetah and slave
context_page_description: The Northeast African cheetah is a cheetah subspecies occurring in Northeast Africa. Contemporary records are known in South Sudan and Ethiopia, but population status in Eritrea, Djibouti, Somalia and Sudan is unknown.
  It was first described under the scientific name Cynailurus soemmeringii by the Austrian zoologist Leopold Fitzinger in 1855 on the basis of a specimen from Sudan’s Bayuda Desert brought to the Tiergarten Schönbrunn in Vienna. It is also known as the Sudan cheetah.
  In the 1970s, the cheetah population in Ethiopia, Sudan and Somalia was roughly estimated at 1,150 to 4,500 individuals. In 2007, it was estimated that 950 individuals live inside protected areas in this region; the number of individuals living outside protected areas is unknown.
  This subspecies is more closely related to the Southern African cheetah than to Saharan cheetah populations. Results of a phylogeographic analysis indicate that the two subspecies diverged between 16,000 and 72,000 years ago.
context_section_description: Both continents of Africa and Asia had 100,000 cheetahs in the 19th century. Cheetahs were once numerous in north, central and in the Horn of Africa. They ranged in Egypt and Libya in northern Africa, from Somalia to Niger in northeastern and central Africa. Cheetahs are known to be tamed, trained and to hunt herbivorous animals. Once existing in Egypt, the Ancient Egyptians often kept the cheetahs and raised them as pets, and also tamed and trained them for hunting mammals. Tamed cheetahs were taken to open hunting fields in low-sided carts or by horseback, hooded and blindfolded, and kept on leashes. When the prey was near enough, the cheetahs would be released to go after it.
  This was the Egyptian tradition that was later passed on to the ancient Persians and brought to India, where the practice with Asiatic cheetahs was continued by Indian princes into the 12th century.
caption: Egyptian chariot, accompanied by a cheetah and slave
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