Talk about twins! Cheetahs have very little genetic difference
from one another. Researchers tested the genetics in the red
blood cells of 55 cheetahs, both in the wild and at various
zoos. There are 47 enzyme indicators that are generally used to
examine the genetics of humans or other animals. All of them
gave identical results for every cheetah. There were also 200
total proteins checked and they all matched in all the cheetahs.
Cheetahs are an endangered species with an estimated population
of 1,500 to 25,000 cheetahs worldwide. It is this genetic
uniformity that probably contributes to their status as
endangered species. At some point in the past, cheetahs must
have gone through a population bottleneck. This reduced genetic
diversity, which in turn affected their ability to reproduce. In
captivity, cheetahs have a very low reproduction rate, which was
the reason for the genetic research in the first place. What
they found was that cheetahs probably don’t have much better
reproduction rates in the wild ei