Cheetahs
Originally posted by Stryderunknown
You might want to add "Cheetah population" to your imbreeding search.
I disagree with you, because I think that if you read the literature, the problem with the cheetah's breeding habits, is that it will not breed with those cheetahs that are living in close proximity. A maharajah of India found that out at the cost of 7,000 cheetahs he tried to breed. I think the correct term would be 'bottleneck', not 'inbreeding'; somewhere in the past, all present day cheetahs are descendants of one female (in other words they almost died out before). I think the cheetah may be the perfect animal for its niche; it has speed, agility and beauty.
It's known that the Cheetah population is suffering from imbreeding, since the Cheetah isn't truly a worldwide creature it has a genetic chain that links to all the cheetah's on the planet.
The problem with cheetahs is that they live to close to 'Man the Destroyer of All Things', and they are not evolved to fight off the other successful cats, hyenas & dogs. They used to live from S. Africa to S. India, now only a scattered few in India, Iran & Africa.
I remember there being a mention that the cheetah population is dieing from this and man has the chance to step in an do something, but it does require genetic engineering and artificial insemination. In doing so, it is possible that with man's help their Genepool can be strengthened and more diverse.
I would give them more stamina, to run at least 2 minutes at top speed, not the mere seconds that they do now.
Imbreeding causes weaknesses in species because continued descendants from imbreeding share closely related genetics, so that if one of that specie catches a disease, so can all the others in that specie, since they have roughly the same antibodies etc.
Cheetahs do have that problem, luckily only a few diseases get them.
That is why our specie is very lucky, where someones family might be immune to chicken pox anothers will not, but that family that isn't immune might be immune to mumps.
This means out specie is going to be here for some time on a genefront.
As evidenced by the 'Black Death' in Europe & Asia, 'Old World' diseases in the 'New World', and supergerms now; those that made it, lived to breed another generation, ad infinitum...
For more info, you can start your search here:
http://members.aol.com/cattrust/consorg.htm
Also found this:
http://www.angelfire.com/tx4/catlady/cheetfacts.html