The Mara's lush vegetation is useful in other ways, too. At an average of 54kg, the cheetah is the smallest of the big cats (and is classified in a separate genus – Acinonyx compared to Panthera ...

I think people naturally root for the underdog, so perhaps that’s why Pobe, a 7-year-old female cheetah quickly became my favourite big cat on Xudum island. Cheetahs are quite literally ...

With their black spotted coats and teardrop marks, the cheetah is a sleek animal, racing across grasslands at speeds touching 70 miles (112km) an hour to capture prey. The cat is also a remarkably ...

While mutations in Taqpep can make a cheetah's spots become blotchy, the spots don't turn into stripes. And as Eizirik's work showed, domestic cats with a normal Taqpep gene can be either striped ...