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Show Search For A Lonely Legend The search is on for a lonely legend roaming the South African bush. The effort ef-fort to find and capture one of the world's most extraordinary extraor-dinary animals, a King cheetah, is taking place mainly in the Kruger National Park, where three verified sightings have been reported in the past four years. With the sleek racing lines of the cheetah, body markings more like a leopard's, leo-pard's, and broad tiger-like stripes along its back, the big cat is a scientific puzzle. Not a single King cheetah has , ever been captured alive for detailed study: indeed, since 1927 no more than 26 pelts and one skull are known to have been preserved. Reported Re-ported sightings were spaced years apart. British-born explorer Paul Bottriell and his Australian Aust-ralian wife Lena have spent more than three years researching re-searching the King cheetah. But they still have more questions than answers. Is the animal a more nocturnal noctur-nal sub-species of the ordinary ordi-nary cheetah, living in more densely wooded habitat? Is it an aberrant form in which the markings of individuals found over thousands of square miles are strikingly similar? Or is it the unthinkable the progeny of a leopard and a cheetah? Leopards are known to kill cheetahs. However, Paul Bottriell says laboratory analysis of a King cheetah's hair shows it to be closer to a leopard's. And he claims that most of the King cheetah skins he has studied are bigger than the finely-spotted pelts of normal adult cheetahs. Yet on two of the three occasions King cheetahs have been photographed, they have been in the company com-pany of cheetahs with standard stan-dard markings, supporting the view that the King is a rarely but regularly occuring mutation. If they can capture one, Paul and Lena Bottriell say they have been offered the use of properties, stocked with antelopes and other prey animals, suitable for studying the habits of the legendary King. Their dream is to capture a pair of King cheetahs breeding them so that the mystery can finally be solved. These line drawings of two cheetah skins, the King (left) and the common cheetah, were made by Paul Bosman, a leading South African wild life artist. He describes the King cheetah skins as very beautiful, the background not as dark as that of the common cheetah so that the bold black markings show up vividly, with the hair longer and darker than the normal cheetah's. Only four mounted skins of King cheetahs are on display io .musea . ... ., urns: Two in th'e'Bfitish Museum of Natural" History 'in - --,- - London, one in the Natal Museum, Pietermaritzburg, and another in Cape Town's South African Museum. |