Southern African cheetah

The South African cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus jubatus), also known as the Namibian cheetah,[2] is the most numerous and the nominate cheetah subspecies native to Southern Africa. The Southern African cheetah lives mainly in the lowland areas and deserts of the Kalahari, the savannahs of Okavango Delta, and the grasslands of the Transvaal region in South Africa. In Namibia, cheetahs are mostly found in farmlands.[3] The Southern African cheetah was first described by the German zoologist Johann Christian Daniel von Schreber in 1775 and named Felis jubatus on the basis of a specimen from the Cape of Good Hope.[1]
Previously estimated at a population of 4,190 individuals in Southern Africa since 2007,[3] the total population of the South African cheetah has likely reached over 6,000 individuals,[4][5] with Namibia having the largest cheetah population worldwide. Since 1990, the population was estimated to be about 2,500 individuals in Namibia; until 2015, the cheetah population has increased to more than 3,500 in the country.[6] Botswana contains the second-largest population of cheetahs - in 2007, an estimated population of 1,800. However, in 2016, about 2,000 South African cheetahs were in Botswana, which is about 20% of the world's cheetahs.[7] Around 550 to 850 cheetahs were left in South Africa in 2007. After many conservation efforts, the cheetah population has boosted to more than 1,000. In 2013, the estimated population was between 1,200 and 1,300 cheetahs in South Africa.[8][9] Whilst an estimated that 1,500 adult cheetahs live in South Africa since 2016,[10] the Endangered Wildlife Trust stated that the total population ranges between 1,166 and 1,742 cheetahs in South Africa alone in 2017.[11] In Zimbabwe, on the contrary, the cheetahs' population has severely declined, from more than 1,500 cheetahs since 1999 to 400 cheetahs in 2007, to between 150 and 170 cheetahs as of 2015. In 2007, around 100 individuals remained in Zambia and between 50 and 90 were left in Mozambique.
South African cheetahs have gone extinct in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Lesotho. The cheetahs have been reintroduced in Swaziland[3] and recently in Malawi.[12][13]
Historically, cheetahs were thought to be genetically homogeneous.[14] This changed in 2011, when results of a phylogeographic study revealed that the Asiatic cheetah and the cheetah populations in Africa are genetically distinct and separated between 32,000 and 67,000 years ago.[15]
In 2017, the Cat Classification Task Force of the Cat Specialist Group revised felid taxonomy and now recognizes the Southern and Eastern African cheetah populations as A. j. jubatus.[16]
Category:Animals
Category:Creatures