The story goes that the mother cheetah emerged from her slumbers with her cubs and found the cheetah population decimated by a global catastrophe. And thus she cried tears which ran down and left the distinctive "tear marks" on every cheetah. It has been found that every cheetah alive today is extremely closely related - genetic sequencing is almost identical. Tests have been done on six cheetahs from different parts of the world, exchanging skin grafts - not one of the grafts was rejected. Normally only a siamese twin will accept a skin graft without anti-rejection drugs...And so, the genetic inbreeding has made these magnificent animals prone to genetic disorders, which manifest more often only in captivity where they are subject to environmental stressors. One in particular is FIP....
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