The Asiatic Cheetah: Lost speedster of the north
Around 150 years ago, the fastest land-dwelling animal that ever lived roamed the open savannahs of northern Bangladesh. Our horizonless plains are long gone, so are our speedsters
The cheetah sports the title of the fastest living animal capable of attaining a blazing speed of 80 to 128 km/h. They are lightly built to assist speed.
Long, thin legs help them to gallop and a long tail to steer. Cheetahs lack all heavy features common in carnivores equal to them in size, as if they were cats on a diet!
Cheetahs have four subspecies; the Asiatic cheetah belongs to Asia. Its historical range once spread all over the plains of the Middle East, the Caucasus and the Indian Peninsula.
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Today, it survives only in Central Iran with roughly 50 surviving individuals.
Cheetahs need vastly open areas and savannah formations.
In India, they were found in the Punjab Region, Chota Nagpur Plateau, Chhattisgarh Plain, and the northern tip of the Deccan Plateau.
The last cheetah of Bengal was sighted in 1951 in Chhattishgarh. The last sighting of the Indian subspecies came from western Afghanistan in 2006.
Scientific name: Acinonyx jubatus venaticus
Global status: Critically Endangered. As of December 2017, fewer than 50 individuals are thought to be remaining in three subpopulations that are scattered over 140,000 sq km in Central Iran.
Remarks : Cheetahs lived in the Barind Tract of the Greater Rangpur region. Possibly the last cheetah closest to present-day Bangladesh was killed in Paschim Dinajpur, a district in West Bengal, India, in 1874.
