why are cheetahs not technically big cats? is it...

Anonymous asked:

why are cheetahs not technically big cats? is it just because they're weird as hell or do they not meet some big cat criteria?

bunjywunjy Answer:

so the thing about Big Cats is that they’re all closely related members of the genus Panthera!

because they’re all part of the same lineage, they share a lot of traits like the ability to roar.

and cheetahs are actually members of a completely different cat lineage altogether, the genus Acinonyx!

they’re not very closely related to the big cats at all and are actually most closely related to Pumas, which you can totally see if you stack them up next to each other and squint really hard.

it’s okay though, the cheetah can still be the biggest cat in our hearts :’)

bunjywunjy:

also some of you may have picked up on this, but the reason that the cheetah’s closest modern relative is a family of cats on an entirely separate fucking continent is that… drumroll please… cheetahs actually evolved in North America!
B-DM TSCH!
about nine million years ago in North America, cheetahs and pumas split off from the rest of the small-cat lineage together and evolved into their separate groups! different species of now-extinct ancient cheetahs thrived in North America for millions of years, streaking across the prairies and clobbering the everloving shit out of any herbivore too slow to get out of the way.
<art src: Peter Schouten>
(this is why the North American pronghorn antelope is actually the second-fastest land animal alive today, despite not having any current predators even vaguely in their speed range! once upon a time, not that long ago, they had to dodge a prehistoric cheetah that could pull highway-level speeds.)
cheetahs were successful enough that they even made it out of North America and into Eurasia via the Bering Land Bridge, only making it to Africa after conquering their way across the steppes!
<art src: Velizar Simeonovski>
but things changed, as they always do, and global climate disruption led the the extinction of all cheetah species except the one in Africa, effectively terminating the entire cheetah dynasty.
do they remember? I hope so.
pumas are doing JUST FINE, though! guess there’s something to be said for being a mid-sized hypergeneralist predator in the face of global change.