big-cat-network:

King Cheetahs: Is their beauty worth the consequences?

written by admin Lynx

The king cheetah is a color mutation of the cheetah, causing blotches and stripes in place of their usual, uniform spots. Sometimes, they even have small “manes,” with the fur on the back of their neck and shoulder blades being longer than they tend to be on the average cheetah. At one point, they were classified as their own species, Acinonyx rex, though this was disproved in 1981 when two spotted female cheetahs gave birth to king cheetah cubs at the De Wildt Cheetah and Wildlife Centre in South Africa.

The king tabby mutation is recessive, meaning that both parents must possess the gene for it to show on the coat of their offspring. Due to this, only a handful are believed to exist in the wild. But of course, it did not take long for humans to take notice of these unique cheetahs and exploit them.

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bigcatawareness:

moreanimalia:

bigbootsandscaryeyes:

did-you-kno:

The Story Of The World’s First White Ligers 

There are around 1,000 ligers in the world today, but none of them were white until these 4 cubs came along.

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They are also the most pointless big cats on the planet because they have no conservation value!

This .. hurts my brain.

White tigers are genetically fucked up already - hybrids between subspecies, inbreed to “fix” the recessive white gene. And then someone figured that breeding a white tiger to a white lion was a good idea??? Ligers (and tigrons) already have known problems due to them being hybrids; their genes don’t work perfectly resulting in various health problems.

And… why would you make a didyouknow post about it without mentioning their downsides?? I can’t imagine the number of people now gushing over this :I

These cubs were born over a year ago and this is literally the only thing I’ve heard about them despite how “awesome and rare” they are. Are they even still alive you think?

It pisses me off so much when popular ‘facts’ blogs go and do shit like this T___T

shogunofyellow:

The King Cheetah is a rare mutation of the cheetah characterized by a distinct fur pattern. It was first noted in what was then Southern Rhodesia (modern-day Zimbabwe) in 1926. Although strangely marked pelts had come from Africa, a live king cheetah was not photographed until 1974 in South Africa’s Kruger National Park. It has been known to exist in Zimbabwe, Botswana and in the northern part of South Africa’s Transvaal province. A recessive gene must be inherited from both parents for this pattern to appear, which is one reason why it is so rare.

While admiring the king cheetah’s unique pattern, we must also realize that humans exploit this - similar to how white tigers are exploited. King cheetahs infrequently occur in the wild, therefore they are inbred in captivity to produce more cheetahs with the same color mutation. This is a good graphic explaining the inbreeding behind color morphs (and yes, it’s about white lions - but the same method is used with king cheetahs). 

Now, this is especially dangerous for cheetahs. The species as a whole is already inbred and have unusually low genetic variability due to a genetic bottleneck during the last ice age. This causes infertility problems, making conservation efforts for cheetahs difficult. So, further inbreeding to produce king cheetahs could have devastating effects. 

With that, I ask you to please think twice before glorifying king cheetahs.