Why are cheetahs facing the threat of extinction? | Explained News,The Indian Express
In India, the native cheetah species was the Asiatic cheetah, which went extinct in 1952.
Saturday, Sep 17, 2022
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HomeExplainedWhy are cheetahs facing the threat of extinction?
Why are cheetahs facing the threat of extinction?
In India, the native cheetah species was the Asiatic cheetah, which went extinct in 1952.
By: Explained Desk
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New Delhi | September 17, 2022 3:35:58 pm
The initial idea was to bring Asiatic cheetahs here, as a movement within the continent would be easier and help the animals adjust to Indian conditions better, but this was rejected by Iran. (Twitter @narendramodi)With eight cheetahs being relocated from Namibia in Africa to India’s Kuno Wildlife Sanctuary in Madhya Pradesh, there is hope that the translocation project for reviving India’s long-extinct cheetah population may achieve success.
In India, the native cheetah species was the Asiatic cheetah, which went extinct in 1952. Currently, only Iran has Asiatic cheetahs in the wild, numbering around 12, and the majority of the remaining 7,000-strong population of the big cats around the world is of African cheetahs – the ones that have now come to India.
Even before this translocation, attempts were made to bring back the animals to India. The initial idea was to bring Asiatic cheetahs here, as a movement within the continent would be easier and help the animals adjust to Indian conditions better, but this was rejected by Iran. One reason was the dwindling population of its own cheetahs. But why does the animal face severe threats of extinction globally?
Why do only African and Asiatic cheetahs remain in the wild?
According to the journal National Geographic, a popular theory on cheetahs’ evolution says they descended from the same ancestor as the American puma, another big cat. This implies cheetahs were not limited to two continents at that point. “About 10,000 to 12,000 years ago, around the end of the last ice age, an extinction event took place that wiped out many large mammal species around the world, including the wild cheetahs of North America and Europe. The extinction of these early cheetah species left only the Asian and African populations of cheetahs”, it says.
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