The cheetah is a spotted beast that can burn through savannas like a bolt of lightning to hunt prey vastly bigger than itself. This big cat is the world’s fastest terrestrial mammal, which purrs more than it growls and has been historically tamed and trained by people to hunt game.
Cheetahs once roamed most of Africa and western and southern Asia, from the Arabian Peninsula to India. Today, it has vanished from 91% of its historical global range. In India, it was declared extinct in 1952 from hunting and habitat loss, and over a century ago, it vanished from Saudi Arabia.
Asiatic cheetahs (Acinonyx jubatus venaticus), unlike those in Africa, which that tenuously hold on, are the most critically endangered: just around 50 individual Asiatic cheetahs remain in the wild, a small population in Iran.
Amidst this dire scenario came a “serendipitous discovery” recently in the caves of Saudi Arabia of the “long-term presence” of cheetahs. Scientists discovered seven naturally mummified animals and skeletal remains of 54, reported in the latest edition of Nature Communications Earth and Environment.
The remains, unearthed from the Lauga cave network in the Arar area of northern Saudi Arabia, dated back to 4,223 years ago and some to just over a century ago, giving scientists a valuable opportunity to understand the evolutionary history of cheetahs in their former range. They concluded that “rewilding” of cheetahs in Saudi Arabia can be sourced from the closest subspecies of the discovered cheetahs”, potentially paving the way for their ‘return’.
Treasures from caves
Genomic data of these specimens showed the presence of two subspecies, the Asiatic cheetah (A. j. venaticus) and the north-western African cheetah (A. j. hecki), neither of which occur in the Arabian Peninsula any more. The many caves in the region could have been used as denning sites for the creatures. The study used palaeo-chronological dating to establish the time period, genomic sequencing to identify subspecies, and radiographic analysis to determine age.
Although records indisputably suggest the historical presence of the species in the areas designated Saudi Arabia, Oman, Yemen, Kuwait, Iraq, Jordan, and Palestine today, some point to the scarcity of evidence to adequately represent the true historical distribution of the cheetah. While the primary reasons for the Arabian Peninsula’s vanishing cheetah are poorly documented, they are thought to be habitat loss and fragmentation, prey depletion, human-wildlife conflict, unregulated hunting, and trade in cheetah as pets or game hunting, said the research paper.
Over the past 50 years, Saudi Arabia has significantly changed wildlife management policy and one of its biodiversity goals includes the re-establishment of animals to their former biogeographic ranges.
The kingdom has already successfully restored ungulates to landscapes where they had disappeared or dwindled, e.g. Arabian oryx, Arabian gazelles, and the Nubian ibex. As ungulate populations recover here, “it is timely for the reestablishment of extirpated apex carnivores — among them cheetah,” said the paper. DNA studies showed that the prehistoric Saudi Arabia cheetahs are genomically closest to the west African subspecies A. j. hecki.
The results also highlight the important role that caves play “as repositories of ancient biodiversity informing.” Natural mummies can remain well preserved for thousands of years, especially in arid soil caves where desiccation was made possible by dry microclimates where bacterial action is diminished.
Africa’s cheetahs are in peril too: 90% of the animals live outside protected areas and on private farmlands, and conflict with people is not infrequent: the cats prey on livestock quite visibly during the day, and farmers, to save their animals, often trap or shoot cheetahs, per the paper. Larger carnivores such as lions, leopards, and hyena also kill cheetahs when competing for prey or territory. As a result, in Saharan Africa, the spotted cats are as few as 0.0002/km.
An adequate habitat?
Ravi Chellam, wildlife biologist and CEO, Metastring Foundation, Bengaluru, has been tracking Project Cheetah in India, as part of which several African cheetahs have been introduced to Madhya Pradesh. The Hindu asked him about the prudence of reintroducing cheetahs to Saudi Arabia: “This is a sovereign decision for each country to take. Having said that, from an ecological perspective it is important to ensure that adequate good quality habitats are available before sourcing the cheetahs for the reintroduction effort,” he said.
Based on the evidence, at least 1 lakh sq. km. of habitat is required to establish a viable and self-sustaining population of cheetahs in the semi-desert and desert landscapes of Saudi Arabia. The chosen habitats should support a reasonable density and diversity of prey species and be relatively free of human activities especially road traffic, he added.
As for whether Asian cheetahs should have been introduced to India, Dr. Chellam said that with the highly endangered status of Asiatic cheetahs in Iran, “it is not advisable to remove any cheetahs from this very small population.”
For the same reason, cheetahs reintroduced to Saudi Arabia would have to be the northwest African sub-species, A. j. hecki. But even this subspecies is endangered in the wild in western and northern Africa. So “the only realistic options are to source the required cheetahs from either A. j. raineyi (east Africa) or A. j. jubatus (southern Africa),” Dr. Chellam said.
There is little clarity about the funding for India’s Project Cheetah but, he added, “it will be one of the most expensive projects” in India’s conservation history.
Liz Kierepka, a molecular ecologist who wasn’t involved in the Saudi Arabia study, told ScienceNews that the discovery is “quite the rarity,” outside of permafrost areas where several natural mummies of megafauna from the Ice Age exist. She also said relocating cheetahs from already tiny populations has the potential to cause “new problems for the donor pools.”.
It requires more data, but Dr. Kierepka said she is curious what shows up in genetic analyses to help select donor cheetahs: “If they really want to pursue rewilding,” she said, that could make reintroduction more likely to succeed.
divya.gandhi@thehindu.co.in
Published – February 05, 2026 05:30 am IST
