RE: Kingdom Animalia #2 - The Cheetah
Good post. But there are a couple points I’d like to just bring up for it.. Two of your photographs are of jaguars. Where stated that they have a low chance of contracting a disease due to their low population i feel is inaccurate, because if a disease is contracted by an individual in a low population, then it has a higher chance of wiping out the whole group. Courtship is observed in all cat species with the Male sticking with the female for up to 3 days whilst they mate. I also think for posts like this you could avoid writing about how they can be tamed or live with other animals, we should be encouraging people to not want wild animals as pets as this is a huge problem with the illegal pet trade. That’s entirely your choice to write I just feel in an educational post it should be avoided :)
With respect to cantacting diseases, the cheetahs live in few groups and sometimes alone(most especially, female cheetahs) and just like we know, they are territorial animals, and with their low population, this simply entells that a diseases attack on a group of Cheetahs is less likely to lead to an epidemic on the cheetah specie. Just like you might have observed writing on these animals, sources have information mixed up most times, Thanks for pointing out a few lapses in information,will do better at the research. Have learnt a lot from your contribution :)
Although I see what you are saying I still don’t agree. Smaller populations of animals are at huge risk of diseases that will wipe them out. The cheetah has had a extreme reduction in genetic diversity which is called a “bottleneck” that sadly has caused a reduction in sperm quality, focal palatine erosion and they are high susceptibile to the same highly infectious diseases. Sadly, the more we increase our population, habitat fragmentation occurs thus increasing inbreeding, leading to a further loss in genetic diversity. These factors sadly do contribute to high risk of infectious diseases wiping out the population.
Always happy to help out I enjoy your work :)
Now I understand your view, quite a valid argument made, and now am like "yeah!!, she really do know these guys!! :) ".
Hope to catch you someday in the community chat, that will be an ocean of knowledge. Thanks once more, How is Basil?, send my regards :)
Basil is great! Will try and do an update on him soon. You are welcome, glad to of helped :)