Rare Spotless Cheetah Sighted In Kenya

“I was told about this incredible ‘morph’ phenomenon that has not been seen for over 90 years…the last one recorded was shot in Tanzania in 1921. By ‘morph’ this means a genetic colour variation, the most well known being the ‘King’ cheetah, specimens of which have only occurred in South Africa and Zimbabwe. The Mughal Emperor of India recorded having a white cheetah presented to him in 1608, saying that the spots were of a blue colour and the whiteness of the body also inclined to blue-ishness….there are also reported cases of melanism or albinism, but the latter does not apply to this cheetah. The only reported cases of this morph, which scientists believe is a recessive gene like the king cheetah, have been in East Africa from the subspecies, acynonix jubatus raineyii.” – excerpt from Guy Coombes’ account with a ‘morph’ cheetah

Photos © Guy Coombes

Guy Coombes photographed this rare ‘morph’ cheetah in the Athi-Kapiti area of south­ern Kenya over a year ago. The chee­tah (Acinonyx juba­tus) is clas­si­fied as Vulnerable (IUCN 2008). Current study results show that Kenya holds 1200 – 1400 chee­tahs with over 75% resid­ing on land out­side pro­tected areas.
Please visit Action for Cheetahs in Kenya (ACK), whose mis­sion is to pro­mote the con­ser­va­tion of chee­tahs through research, aware­ness and com­mu­nity par­tic­i­pa­tion in Kenya.
For more information about the sighting please visit Guy Coombes’ blog post

Courtesy of Stefan Grossmann

Other rare color morphs of the species include speckles, melanism, albinism and gray coloration. Most have been reported in Indian cheetahs, particularly in captive specimens kept for hunting.
The Mughal Emperor of India, Jahangir, recorded having a white cheetah presented to him in 1608. In the memories of Tuzk-e-Jahangiri, the Emperor, says that in the third year of his reign, Raja Bir Singh Deo brought a white cheetah to show me. Although other sorts of creatures, both birds and beasts have white varieties .... I had never seen a white cheetah. Its spots, which are (usually) black, were of a blue colour, and the whiteness of the body also inclined to blue-ishness. This suggests a chinchilla mutation which restricts the amount of pigment on the hair shaft. Although the spots were formed of black pigment, the less dense pigmentation gives a hazy, grayish effect. As well as Jahangir's white cheetah at Agra, a report of "incipient albinism" has come from Beaufort West according to Guggisberg.
In a letter to "Nature in East Africa", H. F. Stoneham reported a melanistic cheetah (black with ghost markings) in the Trans-Nzoia District of Kenya in 1925. Vesey Fitzgerald saw a melanistic cheetah in Zambia in the company of a spotted cheetah. Red (erythristic) cheetahs have dark tawny spots on a golden background. Cream (isabelline) cheetahs have pale red spots on a pale background. Some desert region cheetahs are unusually pale; probably they are better-camouflaged and therefore better hunters and more likely to breed and pass on their paler coloration. Blue (Maltese or grey) cheetahs have variously been described as white cheetahs with grey-blue spots (chinchilla) or pale grey cheetahs with darker grey spots (Maltese mutation). A cheetah with hardly any spots was shot in Tanzania in 1921 (Pocock); it had only a few spots on the neck and back, and these were unusually small.