Thank you
It is one of the newest exibits at Chester having only opened last year. It's current residents are 3:1. The 3 boys came from UAE in 2008. The 4th male that came with them has now gone to Whipsnade and a female has come in exchange for him. The female is called Kinky due to a kink in her tail.
...and, crucially, they are not the usual South African Cheetahs (Acinonyx jubatus jubatus) as in most zoos, but the North-eastern form, Acinonyx jubatus soemmeringii. Whipsnade keeps both of these subspecies (the soemerringii there are off-show but can be seen from near the hippo house).
with the genetic bottleneck that cheetahs went through, are there actually valid subspecies? I thought the genetics of any given cheetah were remarkably close to any other cheetah.
Subspecies designation is something of a dark art and somewhat open to interpretation (and it's true that genetic diversity within cheetahs is remarkably low); but these subspecies are widely accepted. And it could be argued that due to their low diversity, it is important to preserve any slightest variability that there is by keeping subspecies/populations separate!
