# Cheetahs -- Can they interbreed with other big cats?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cheetahs-can-they-interbreed-with-other-big-cats/621938
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [May 14, 2012, 11:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cheetahs-can-they-interbreed-with-other-big-cats/621938 "2012-05-14T23:25:58Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@gytalf2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gytalf2000)
#### Post date: [May 14, 2012, 11:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cheetahs-can-they-interbreed-with-other-big-cats/621938/1 "2012-05-14T23:25:58Z")
I know that lions and tigers can interbreed and produce ligers and tiglons. Are cheetahs capable of interbreeding with the other big cats, or are they too genetically distinct to do so?
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### Author:  [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)
#### Post date: [May 14, 2012, 11:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cheetahs-can-they-interbreed-with-other-big-cats/621938/2 "2012-05-14T23:37:59Z")
Cheetahs aren’t actually “big cats”. I put that in quotes because it’s not a scientific term. But cheetahs are not as closely related as the real “big” cats are to each other. Cheetahs are more like “inbetween cats”.
I’m not aware of any verified cheetah hybrids out there.
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### Author:  [@jz78817](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jz78817)
#### Post date: [May 14, 2012, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cheetahs-can-they-interbreed-with-other-big-cats/621938/3 "2012-05-14T23:43:37Z")
Cheetahs have enought trouble breeding amongst themselves.
[http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/rare-breed.html](http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/rare-breed.html)
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### Author:  [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)
#### Post date: [May 14, 2012, 11:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cheetahs-can-they-interbreed-with-other-big-cats/621938/4 "2012-05-14T23:44:55Z")
> [@](#):
>
> Cheetahs are more like “inbetween cats”.
Actually, I don’t think they’re related to the “small cats”, either. As in, a housecat and a lion are closer to each other than either is to a cheetah.
One telltale marker is retractable claws. All the true cats have them, but cheetahs don’t.
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### Author:  [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)
#### Post date: [May 14, 2012, 11:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cheetahs-can-they-interbreed-with-other-big-cats/621938/5 "2012-05-14T23:47:38Z")
Wikipedia on the [Felidae](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felidae) may be informative.
Of the “big cats,” the lion, tiger, jaguar, and leopard are in genus _Panthera_. Some experts also put the snow leopard there; Wikipedia, following a “splitter” paradigm, puts it in _Uncia_. The clouded leopards are in _Neofelis_. These two or three genera are closely related.
Older analyses (from when I learned felid taxonomy) set the cheetah apart from all other cats great and small in its own subfamily, _Acinonychinae_. The taxonomy that Wikipedia follows (based on DNA analysis) shows it as the separate genus _Acinonyx_ which is closely related to _Puma_, comprising the mountain lion and the jaguaroundi.
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### Author:  [@heathen\_earthling](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/heathen_earthling)
#### Post date: [May 14, 2012, 11:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cheetahs-can-they-interbreed-with-other-big-cats/621938/6 "2012-05-14T23:53:02Z")
I don’t think anyone knows. Cheetahs are a threatened species, and zoos breeding them are probably more interested in making more cheetahs. The closest living relative of the cheetah is the puma, and pumas [can interbreed with leopards](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumapard)…
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### Author:  [@maggenpye](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/maggenpye)
#### Post date: [May 15, 2012, 12:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cheetahs-can-they-interbreed-with-other-big-cats/621938/7 "2012-05-15T00:06:46Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#):
>
> (snip)
>
> I’m not aware of any verified cheetah hybrids out there.
So… once a cheetah, always a cheetah.
Sorry, tried to resist, failed.
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### Author:  [@Darwins\_Finch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darwins_Finch)
#### Post date: [May 15, 2012, 12:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cheetahs-can-they-interbreed-with-other-big-cats/621938/8 "2012-05-15T00:30:17Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#):
>
> Cheetahs aren’t actually “big cats”. I put that in quotes because it’s not a scientific term. But cheetahs are not as closely related as the real “big” cats are to each other. Cheetahs are more like “inbetween cats”.
There isn’t really anything ‘inbetween’ about cheetahs:
[Defining Cheetahs, a multivariate analysis of skull shape in big cats](http://www.catsg.org/cheetah/05_library/5_3_publications/N_and_O/OReagan_2002_Defining_cheetahs.pdf) (pdf doc)
> [@](#):
>
> CONCLUSIONS
> On the basis of this study, a Cheetah can be defined as a cat with narrow teeth, small canines
> and a wide brain case for its size. Despite being a highly specialized cat, it still follows the
> generalized large felid form in 21 out of 34 variables analysed. The dental differences seen
> are adaptations to capturing and killing prey that have occurred in the genus Acinonyx alone.
> In addition, the Cheetah has retained some cranial features of the smaller cats, despite
> increasing its overall size. In view of this, it is not so much that Cheetahs have altered that is
> surprising, but how apparently conservative the feline cranial shape has been over the last
> few million years.
Further, since they are presumed to share a common ancestor with pumas, about the only thing they _could_ be “between” is other cats.
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### Author:  [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)
#### Post date: [May 15, 2012, 1:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cheetahs-can-they-interbreed-with-other-big-cats/621938/9 "2012-05-15T01:41:04Z")
> [@Darwins\_Finch](#):
>
> There isn’t really anything ‘inbetween’ about cheetahs:
Sure there is. They are big in size, but they don’t roar. Again, “big cat” is not a scientific term, as I’m sure you know. So, there are different ways to define “big cat”, and one of the definition is the cats that roar. And if you take that as your definition, then can’t call a cheetah a “big cat”, but you don’t really want to call a cheetah a “small cat”, so intermediate does the job well, in a completely nonscientific way, of course.
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### Author:  [@Darwins\_Finch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darwins_Finch)
#### Post date: [May 15, 2012, 1:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cheetahs-can-they-interbreed-with-other-big-cats/621938/10 "2012-05-15T01:57:45Z")
Sorry, I actually misunderstood your ‘inbetween’ to mean that cheetahs were between cats and…something else. My response was that they are between ‘some cats’ and ‘other cats’, and are, therefore, full-on cats. Didn’t even occur to me that you were talking about size… Apologies for the misunderstanding.
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### Author:  [@VOW](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VOW)
#### Post date: [May 15, 2012, 2:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cheetahs-can-they-interbreed-with-other-big-cats/621938/11 "2012-05-15T02:00:00Z")
Do cheetahs purr?
~VOW
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### Author:  [@cornflakes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cornflakes)
#### Post date: [May 15, 2012, 2:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cheetahs-can-they-interbreed-with-other-big-cats/621938/12 "2012-05-15T02:21:55Z")
> [@jz78817](#):
>
> Cheetahs have enought trouble breeding amongst themselves.
>
> [http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/rare-breed.html](http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/rare-breed.html)
Then it’s true that cheetahs never prosper…
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### Author:  [@Tamerlane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamerlane)
#### Post date: [May 15, 2012, 2:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cheetahs-can-they-interbreed-with-other-big-cats/621938/13 "2012-05-15T02:58:05Z")
> [@VOW](#):
>
> Do cheetahs purr?
[Apparently](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drq_ww7Ytzw).
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### Author:  [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)
#### Post date: [May 15, 2012, 5:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cheetahs-can-they-interbreed-with-other-big-cats/621938/14 "2012-05-15T05:20:13Z")
> [@Darwins\_Finch](#):
>
> Sorry, I actually misunderstood your ‘inbetween’ to mean that cheetahs were between cats and…something else. My response was that they are between ‘some cats’ and ‘other cats’, and are, therefore, full-on cats. Didn’t even occur to me that you were talking about size… Apologies for the misunderstanding.
No worries. The whole thing about “big cats” is kind of a distraction anyway since it’s not a scientific designation. But, yes, cheetahs are cats in every sense of the word.
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### Author:  [@Tristan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tristan)
#### Post date: [May 15, 2012, 1:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cheetahs-can-they-interbreed-with-other-big-cats/621938/15 "2012-05-15T13:33:20Z")
I recall hearing at MArine World (I think) that apparently some long time in the past, Cheetahs were almost extinct, but have bred back to where they are today via some rather vicious inbreeding. However, rather than the usual issues that comes with that, instead Cheetah’s have become almost clones of each other, to the point where tissue grafts from cheetah to cheetah usually do not require immunosuppressants.
Anecdotal, obviously.
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### Author:  [@gytalf2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gytalf2000)
#### Post date: [May 15, 2012, 2:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cheetahs-can-they-interbreed-with-other-big-cats/621938/16 "2012-05-15T14:12:41Z")
Thanks for the information, guys!
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### Author:  [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)
#### Post date: [May 15, 2012, 2:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cheetahs-can-they-interbreed-with-other-big-cats/621938/17 "2012-05-15T14:14:01Z")
> [@Tristan](#):
>
> I recall hearing at MArine World (I think) that apparently some long time in the past, Cheetahs were almost extinct, but have bred back to where they are today via some rather vicious inbreeding. However, rather than the usual issues that comes with that, instead Cheetah’s have become almost clones of each other, to the point where tissue grafts from cheetah to cheetah usually do not require immunosuppressants.
>
> Anecdotal, obviously.
Yes, that’s pretty much the case. They recently went through what geneticists call a [genetic bottleneck](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_bottleneck). Something we probably went through sometime around 60k - 80k years ago. Ours probably wasn’t quite so bad, but it still happened.
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### Author:  [@Rhythmdvl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rhythmdvl)
#### Post date: [May 16, 2012, 5:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cheetahs-can-they-interbreed-with-other-big-cats/621938/18 "2012-05-16T05:58:57Z")
Tangentially and temporally related [XKCD](http://xkcd.com/1056/).
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### Author:  [@Saint\_Cad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saint_Cad)
#### Post date: [May 16, 2012, 2:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cheetahs-can-they-interbreed-with-other-big-cats/621938/19 "2012-05-16T14:19:03Z")
Anecdotedly, in Africa many families keep Cheetahs as housecats.
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### Author:  [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)
#### Post date: [May 16, 2012, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cheetahs-can-they-interbreed-with-other-big-cats/621938/20 "2012-05-16T14:57:39Z")
> [@Saint\_Cad](#):
>
> Anecdotedly, in Africa many families keep Cheetahs as housecats.
How “many”? There aren’t very many cheetahs in existence.
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