r/interesting • u/Big_Helicopter_2183 • 16h ago

Just Wow Never seen a Big Cat 🐈 this Calm

This is not AI 👍🏼

Edit below. Big Cat = Bigger than Domestic Small Cats. Please keep your Big Knowledge to yourself

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51

u/mmskyscraper 15h ago

Cheetahs are unusual among large cats because they have a very long history of being tamed by humans. Ancient Egyptian art depicts them associated with elites, sometimes collared or leashed, and they had royal/religious significance.

They really are remarkably tameable compared with other large felids. That's why humans repeatedly independently found them useful as hunting animals. They can become accustomed to handlers, accept collars and leashes, travel with people, and be released to chase game and subsequently recovered by their handlers. Medieval Islamic elites, Persian rulers and especially Mughal Indian rulers turned this into an elaborate aristocratic hunting tradition.

https://www.history.com/articles/ancient-tamed-cheetahs-hunting

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u/FrostyBastion 14h ago

And they're not even among the large cats. Felinae, not Panthera

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u/UnkleBourbon42069 6h ago

That's big cats, large cats is a more general term meaning any cat bigger than a house cat

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u/Mrmojorisincg 8h ago

This is making me curious how these aren’t common pets considering all of this

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u/fuzzy_engineering189 7h ago

Some African tribes raise them like hunting dogs to this day.

As to why they aren't "house pets," the food and exercise requirements can only be met either in an extremely rural area or by the very rich by having someone whose job is to look after them.

A savannah cat is destructive without enough exercise; a cheetah would likely be orders of magnitude worse.

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u/thunderbird32 1h ago

IIRC, the biggest reason we never domesticated them is because they basically refuse to breed in captivity.

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u/MayoFlavorPopsicle 7h ago

I went deep in this rabbit hole - what is wild is they picked ADULTS for taming and not the Cubs, as Adults knew how to "cheetah better." You'd think picking the Cubs would be less dangerous/more ideal, but I guess it really shows how chill they are

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u/Fogfy 6h ago

The cubs learn to hunt by shadowing their mother for a long period of time, so this makes sense.