Asiatic cheetahs forced to hunt livestock

An international team of scientists working in Iran investigated what the animals ate in places where game numbers had been reduced by poachers.

They found the cats had turned to hunting domestic animals because they could not survive on smaller prey, BBC reported.

Safeguarding the cats needs a clamp down on poaching, the scientists found.

The study is published in the Journal of Arid Environments  and addresses a conflict that emerged among Iranian conservationists over the Asiatic cheetah, a subspecies of the cheetah that is "critically endangered" according to the IUCN's Red List .

It had been suggested that the Asiatic cheetah might survive by eating more rodents and hares in areas where medium-sized ungulates had declined.

But this study suggests that is not true.

The scientists completed the investigation over five years in two reserves in north-east Iran, near the Turkmenistan border.

The areas had a depleted population of wild ungulates such as gazelle, wild sheep and goats.

By sampling the cheetahs' scat they gained an insight into what the animals were eating in those areas.

Results suggest that while hares and rodents formed part of the cats' diet, they were not a significant source of nutrition.

The cheetahs mainly fed on medium-sized herbivores, resorting to livestock if necessary, according to the study.

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