Giant Cheetah - Hunting

Hunting

It could have preyed upon anything from small, contemporary muntjac deer, mountainous ibex and bighorn sheep, to elk and possibly sambar, prey that was considerably larger than the modern cheetah's ideal prey, the thomson's gazelle. The modern cheetah utilizes a specific hunting style seen nowhere else in the cat family : on open plains, it locates prey and walks directly towards a group or individual, without crouching, with head and tail down. When it comes within suitable distance (usually 50 yards), it sprints forward. The chase is fast and takes many turns until the cheetah uses an enlarged dew claw to hook the hind leg of the prey or smack its flanks to either knock it off balance or damage its Achilles tendon. When the prey falls to the ground, the cheetah suffocates it with a throat clamp, and after resting, eats as much as it can on the spot before being chased off by larger predators or occasionally having eaten all it can. This sequence of a chase over an open area and the hooking of the back leg is unique and often necessary for the cheetah: prey that does not flee is addressed with a great deal of confusion on the cheetah's part and is often left unharmed if it cannot be coaxed to flee.

Due to the skeletal structure of Acinonyx pardinensis, it is very likely that the larger species used a similar approach to hunting: it, too, bore a large dew claw and the lean form was definitely built for running. A stalk, sprint, trip, and kill was probably a commonality of the large species' hunting tactics. The modern cheetah almost always uses a throat clamp to suffocate prey and it is likely that this species of Acinonyx used this method of killing. Due to the small canines and weaker jaw muscles of both species, a muzzle clamp (seen in lions) or severing of the spinal cord (seen in jaguars) is generally not an option, so a throat clamp would have been used most prominently.