Klappentext: In the days when cheetahs roamed fom the steppes of Soviet Russia to the southern African Cape, there was an abundance of food, and the great running cats were masters of a domain that spanned the globe. Today that habitat is but a shadow of its former range. The cheetah's retreat has been dramatic. Its old habitat has been increasingly usurped by mankind for urban and agricultural development. More and more driven away from the open grassland of its fomer range towards the edges of woodland and forest, the cheetah must adapt. That we are witnessing just such an environmental adaption evolving in the King Cheetah, is the eloquently argued conclusion reached in this account by Lena Godsall Bottriell of one of the most thoroughly researched and adventurous expiditions to come out of Africa in recent times. In 1978, following 18 months preliminary planning, Lena and her husband Paul Bottriell launched an expedition to southern Africa with the aim of increasing the current field knowledge of the legendary King Cheetah. Fourteen months fieldwork, from Botswana, though war-torn Rhodesia, to a final, unique ballon search in Kruger National Park marked the beginning of a further eight years comprehensive research which while documenting nearly forty specimens, and firmly establishing the existance of King Cheetah in the wild, convincingly argues the case for the legendary striped cheetah of southern Africa, being a new geographic race of cheetah in the process of evolving. King Cheetah, an eminently readable account illustrated with breathtaking photographs, offers a major contribution to natural history.