Big Cat Diary: Cheetah - Hardcover

Scott, Jonathan; Scott, Angela

4.39

23 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0007149204 ISBN 13: 9780007149209

Publisher: Collins, 2005

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This companion to the successful BBC1 Big Cat Diary series, goes beyond the day-to-day footage to explore the bigger picture of the lives of cheetahs in Africa.

Following the huge success of Big Cat Diary week in January this year, the big cat team are now preparing their sixth series for the BBC. Having lived in the Mara for 30 years, Jonathan and Angie Scott are widely respected experts on all of Africa’s three big cats.

Big Cat Diary: Cheetah is the third in a series of three books designed to complement the BBC TV series, and provides a complete picture of the lives of the cheetahs that live in the Masai Mara and beyond. As well as a detailed examination of biology and behaviour, the book provides an historical perspective of the cheetah families featured in the series, including the well-known Queen and Kike.

Jonathan and Angie Scott look outside the Masai Mara Game Reserve, to the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania and the Ngorongoro Crater, and Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe and South Africa. They explore how we can conserve the big cat populations and ensure they can maintain breeding populations.

Cheetahs are graceful and beautiful as well as being among the fastest creatures on the planet. With award-winning photography and fascinating stories, Big Cat Diary: Cheetah ensures that Big Cat lovers will not be disappointed.

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Review:

Praise for Big Cat Diary Lion:

‘This book offers great insight into lions’ lives: their everyday behaviour, their social organisation and their development from cub to adult’ Geographical

‘The king of beasts inspires a multitude of emotions...this book captures their magic and the day-to-day reality of their lives’ Traveller Magazine

Praise for Big Cat Diary Leopard:

'everything you'll ever need to know about the top of the spots' BBC Wildlife

From the Back Cover:

Cheetahs are the world's fastest big cats and also one of the most timid. They are one of the easier big cats to see, hunting in the daylight and in the open, relying on the blinding burst of speed to hunt down their prey. Sadly, it is precisely the well-evolved features that make cheetahs such fast, efficient hunters, that also puts them at risk from hyenas and more powerful cats like the lion and leopard. Most cheetahs cubs do not survive into adulthood, which is why cheetahs produce larger litters than other big cats. To minimise risk to young offspring, a cheetah mother will defend and feed her cubs on her own, ranging over a large area of up to 800km2 (300 sq. miles) in the Serengeti to find their prey - usually the Thompson's gazelle.

In recent years, cheetah numbers have plummeted in the northern Mara. The Masai do not hunt cheetahs because they rarely steel livestock or attack humans, but as they farm a wider area, there is less cover for cheetahs to den or to provide camouflage for small cubs, leaving them more open to predation.

Fortunately, the Mara Triangle is still one of the best places to see cheetahs in Africa, and Big Cat Diary: Cheetah tells the story of the much-loved Big Cat Diary cheetahs, Queen and her daughter Kike. They quickly became well known for being so relaxed around vehicles, often leaping onto Jonathan and Angie's bonnet in order to survey their surroundings.

The oldest of big cats according to fossil records, the cheetah is also one of the best loved. The Scotts award-winning photography and intimate knowledge of this fleet-footed cat captures the behaviour and beauty of the cheetah perfectly. Big Cat Diary: Cheetah offers the ultimate armchair-safari insight into one of the fastest creatures on the planet.

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