Remember that cheetahs (Acinonyx jubatus), although they’re large African cats, cannot roar: they chirp, as well as making a panoply of non-roaring noises. (Go here to see my recent post which shows an adult cheetah embarrassing itself when vocalizing.)
Here’s a cheetah cub making even cuter noises. The YouTube notes give some background:
This cheetah kitten named Nala was in Namibia Africa when I was visiting some friends of mine this past summer. Her mother was killed by a car, so my friends kindly took care of her. She was well fed and had 44,000 acres to roam around in and be safe. Enjoy!
Oh god, I’ve died from the cuteness.
Those eyelashes!
I noticed that too! What gorgeous eyelashes!
Sooooo cute!
That baby cheetah is all face!
I mentioned my Cheetah moment (stroking and hearing a purr some time ago. But, hearing a cat which can’t roar; knowing the “narrowness” …? of the cheetah’s gene pool and knowing that they are easily trained. Could it be, Professor Ceiling Cat, that the current cheetahs have been speciated by first – domestication and then – going feral?
Given how hard they are to breed in captivity and how long cheetah fossils have been found in their historic range (including regions of Africa and Asia where they’ve recently become locally extinct), that seems doubtful.
I was thinking particularly of the extreme monomorphism which suggest either an island species combined with a global extinction or an artificially constrained gene pool perhaps by domestication.
We need a speciation expert on this one.
Professor?
My understanding of the cheetah’s genetic bottleneck is that it is believed to have occurred during the last ice age. That would put your proposed domestication period at roughly the same time as humans domesticated dogs. It seems dubious to me that any species could be so thoroughly domesticated as to cause such a genetic bottleneck that severe, then become a completely wild animal for thousands of years and only become tamed (not domesticated) in historic time.
Adorable!
Yes. Cute. And maybe we bred them to be cute. Neotenization is such fun.._> (Cubist emoticon. Implies that cheetahs are cute from any angle.
Cuteness doesn’t move me much, but whatever that cub has, consider me moved. 🙂
Cutezpah?
I love chutzpah.
Like when a d*g and a cat are in a room and you discover a mess, the d*g cowers and the cat rubs your leg and says
“it’s his.”