These beautiful creatures are considered the fastest land animal in the world. At the turn of the century an estimated 100,000 cheetah lived in 44 countries throughout Africa and Asia. Today, there are less than 10,000 cheetah world-wide. South Africa is home to fewer than 600 of these majestic cats.
Loss of habitat, poaching, competition with large predators and ranchers are killing off the remaining cheetahs. Unfortunately, captive breeding efforts have not proven meaningful to the cheetah's hopes of survival.
The cheetah needs a large expanse of land to survive, but with the increase of the human population this area is becoming smaller and smaller.
Cheetahs can reach speeds of over 110km, but are extremely reluctant fighters. The result is that although the cheetahs are the best hunters in Africa, they lose much of their prey to the more aggressive predators, such as lions and hyenas.
Spier is also home to several species of native birds.
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Comments: 35
The bird with tethers looks like a raptor: a hawk. Do you know what it is?
Cool owl!
top- grey/ -possibly banded snake eagle (Circaetus cinerascens)
2nd= Secretary Bird Sagittarius serpentarius
3rd- martial eagle?
4- Long -eared Owl
Jerry,
Where in Africa are you going?
thank you for reminding us of how close we are to losing these beautiful animals!
I won't even pretend to deny that! :-)'
We have cougars and wolves, grizzly bears etc here where I live. I live in the woods where they are but seldom see more than their tracks. I walk in the woods a lot with no worries, many of the locals would not do so without a gun. This is as close as you will find now a'days to the wild west, except maybe over on the east side of the mountains.
Just gabbing, later, j.
BTW, I do drink wine (one of my many vices). My husband and I discovered South African wine on our first trip, right after apartheid ended. We loved the Stellenbosch/wine country region so much we chose it as the place to ring in the new millenium.
When I was petting the one Cheetah, he was purring which was really adorable. But other than that they weren't too playful with humans. They did play among themselves though.
The cheetas are fabulous, I also found the owls and other birds quite beautiful.
Great photos!