Big Cat Diary: Cheetah - Hardcover

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Presenter, author and photographer Jonathan Scott has written a number of books including Mara Serengeti, Dawn to Dusk and Kingdom of the Lions. He is a previous winner of the BBC Wildlife Photographer of the Year award, and his stunning photographs appeared in the book that accompanied the first series of Big Cat Diary.

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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.