CULTURAL REFERENCES
Movies
Cheetah is a 1989 live-action film from Walt Disney Pictures starring Keith Coogan and Lucy Deakins. This motion picture was based on Alan Caillou's novel The Cheetahs. It was shot in Nairobi, Kenya. This motion picture features the phrase "Hakuna matata" which became famous when Disney released The Lion King five years later.
Books
André Mercier's Our Friend Yambo (1961) is a curious biography of a cheetah adopted by a French couple and brought to live in Paris. It is seen as a French answer to Born Free (1960), whose author, Joy Adamson, produced a cheetah biography of her own, The Spotted Sphinx (1969).
Hussein, An Entertainment, a novel by Patrick O'Brian set in India of the British Raj period, illustrates the practice of royalty keeping and training cheetahs to hunt antelopes.
The book How It Was with Dooms tells the true story of a family raising an orphaned cheetah cub named Duma (the Swahili word for cheetah) in Kenya.
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Top Documentaries
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Cheetah: Against All Odds (2008)
National Geographic Wild - Cheetah. Fatal Instinct (2015)
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Articles
Cheetahs On the Edge http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2012/11/cheetahs/smith-text
Cheetahs Facts For Kids
http://www.animalfactguide.com/animal-facts/cheetah/
Misrepresentations and False Facts About Cheetahs
Cheetahs are the fastest animal in the world.
There is some truth to this because the Cheetah is the fastest land animal in the world, reaching speeds of 68 MPH for short sprints, which is faster than the speed limit on many US highways. However, the Cheetah is not the fastest animal on the planet—that position actually goes to a bird. The spine tailed swift has been clocked at over 69 miles per hour at level flight, which makes it the fastest living creature on the planet. A close relative of this bird has been clocked much faster but the record is not considered official by scientists because the method for how it was clocked has not been verified. Also, the fastest fish in the world, the sailfish, essentially ties the Cheetah for second place having been clocked swimming at speeds of 68 MPH.
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Cheetahs on the Edge - Pictures, More From National Geographic Magazine
Most vulnerable of the world’s big cats, cheetahs are also one of its shrewdest survivors.
Animal Fact Guide
Cheetah Facts for Kids | Big Cats | African Animals
Did you know cheetahs can span 25 ft. in one stride? Special adaptations help them reach speeds up to 60 mph. Learn more cheetah facts at Animal Fact Guide!