King Cheetah
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| King Cheetah | Festival (Costume) | KF3 | Nexon Game | Gallery |
King Cheetah is a type of Friend that appeared in the original Kemono Friends mobile game.
Appearance
King Cheetah bears many resemblances to her counterpart, Cheetah, having a similar hairstyle and overall colors. Her hair spreads out more than Cheetah's, and has slightly more brown on the top. Her shirt is black compared to Cheetah's white, and her markings are darker and more frequent throughout her clothing. Her eyes are the same yellow colour, though her eye shadow is blue. Her skirt has fringes of white and stripe-like clusters of spots. Her tail is nearly completely brown at the end. Her boots are higher than Cheetah's, coming up to below her knees.
Series Appearances
| Media | Role | |
|---|---|---|
| 2015 | Nexon Game | ↪ Minor character, obtainable |
| 2018 | Kemono Friends Festival | ↪ Minor character, obtainable in multiple forms |
| 2019 | Kemono Friends 3 | ↪ Minor character, obtainable |
| 2022 | Kemono Friends Kingdom | ↪ Major character, unobtainable |
Minor Appearances
Kemono Friends Picross
King Cheetah appears in a puzzle of Kemono Friends Picross where the player can obtain a picture of the friend by solving a puzzle.
In Real Life
Taxonomically, the king cheetah is no different from other cheetahs, still being of the species Acinonyx jubatus; they do not constitute a subspecies. Rather, what distinguishes a king cheetah from others of its kind is the presence of a genetic mutation which dramatically changes the appearance of the animal's coat in three key ways: it adopts a cream colour as opposed to the species' familiar pale yellow, its spots vary in size and shape as opposed to the typical pattern of small, uniform spots the species typically bears, and a set of three broad black stripes adorns its back, typically running along the spine from the individual's neck to the base of its tail. The king cheetah mutation is not known to cause any detrimental health issues.
Because such a mutation is tied to an allele (a component of a gene), it can be passed down from parent to child. The mutated king cheetah allele is recessive to the allele that gives cheetahs their usual coat, meaning that if both the king coat allele and the normal coat allele—which is dominant over the king cheetah allele— are present in the genes determining coat pattern, the normal coat allele takes priority, and the resulting cheetah will have a normal coat, but still possess the king cheetah gene in a dormant state. This is called a heterozygous carrier of the gene, "hetero" indicating the fact they carry two different alleles. Thus, in order for the king cheetah allele to be the one to affect the coat pattern, a cheetah's genes for coat pattern must be homozygous, containing a pair of king cheetah coat alleles.
In theory, if two parent cheetahs were to both carry the king cheetah allele heterozygously, three out of four cubs born of these parents would have normal coats, and one would have a king cheetah coat. Two of the three normal-coated cubs would possess the king cheetah allele in its dormant state, being dominated by the normal coat allele; the third would have a homozygous gene for a normal coat, being unable to pass down the king cheetah gene. Likewise, if two parents homozygously carry the king cheetah allele, or carry the allele heterozygously alongside an allele dominated by the king cheetah allele, their offspring should also be king cheetahs.
Consequently, out of the cheetahs possessing the already-rare king cheetah allele, only a quarter end up being king cheetahs, and a quarter of their offspring lose the gene entirely; this altogether makes the king cheetah mutation very rare to see.
Trivia
- The king cheetah's origins have been a source of speculation for many years, both among native African peoples who had known the animal since time immemorial and Western explorers who came about far later.
- Peoples of what is today Zimbabwe's Manicaland region were familiar with the king cheetah, having called it nsuifisi; they believed it to be the offspring of a leopard and a hyena.1
- One Major A. Cooper postulated in 1926 that the king cheetah might be a hybrid of a cheetah and a leopard.
- British zoologist Reginald Innes Pocock attempted to place the king cheetah in its own species, which would have been called Acinonyx rex (literally, "king cheetah"). Pocock would withdraw this proposal in 1939, having had no evidence to back his claim either at the time of proposal or the time of withdrawal. [2]
References
1. Bottriell, L. G. (1987). King Cheetah: The Story of the Quest. Leiden: Brill Publishers. pp. 26, 83–96. ISBN 978-90-04-08588-6.
2. Pocock, R. I. (1927). "Description of a new species of cheetah (Acinonyx)". Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London. 97 (1): 245–252. doi:10.1111/j.1096-3642.1927.tb02258.x