King( Cooper) Cheetahs

In 1926, reports that a cheetah with black stripes down it's back, and splotches instead of spots, had been seen in Zimbabwe began speculation that a new, rare breed of cheetah, the "King Cheetah", was stalking the plains of southern Africa. Reginald Innes Pocock, was convinced that it was a new species and in 1927 named it Acinonyx rex...but the animal was only to be sighted five more times between then and 1974 when one was finally photographed in South Africa's Kruger National Park.

Debate then ensued about whether the king cheetah was a separate species, subspecies, or color phase. It was even suggested that they were leopard-cheetah hybrids when some analysts noticed that the cuticular scale pattern from a king cheetah's hair more closely resembled that of a leopard than that of a normal cheetah.

The question was answered in the early 1980's when king cheetahs were born as a result of a pairing of normal cheetahs at the De Wildt Cheetah Center in South Africa. Since then two additional kings have been wild-caught, but the majority of the world population of king cheetahs (est. at 50) are descendants of the De Wildt cats. There are probably less than ten free-living kings. The unique coat pattern is now known to be the result of a mutation inherited as a single autosomal recessive allele, the tabby locus.

De Wildt Cheetah Center