Wild Cats

This is one of the most spectacular sites witnessed by a group of photographers. It's a tag team pursuit of a lechwe. Capable of speeds of up to 65 miles an hour, a male cheetah catches up with a lechwe in the wetlands of Botswana (top-left) and attempts to swat it down with his paw. Desperate and struggling, the animal manages to reach a water hole, but there the cheetah's brother joins in to wrestle the lechwe down for good (top-right). Cheetahs lack the strength of larger cats, but they are the masters of maneuvers. In this case, they hold the winded antelope underwater until it drowns - a form of cheetah kill rarely, if ever, before recorded (below).

The cheetahs have been called: The Ghosts of the Grasslands. They are the world's fastest land mammals, but they can't keep up as their habitat is shrinking and predators are reducing their numbers in the wild. There are no more than 250 cheetahs spread out across the serengiti ecosystem as compared to 2800 lions and 9000 spotted hyenas.

Cheetah Appetites:

• Cheetah's appetites are measured on a scale of 1 to 14.
  1 to 7 is hungry
• 8 is hungry enough to look for a hunt, and if tempting, they get serious about it.
• 9 to 14 is full
• At 14, Cheetahs just gaze at all the antelopes
• Conservationists, say gazing at antelopes for Cheetahs is much like watching television for us.

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