CHEETAH TYPICALLY SIT WHEN SCANNING FOR PREY

Most of my experience has been with lions. When not moving about they and other large cats spend most of their time lying down. Indeed they do just about everything lying down, be it watching for prey, eating, drinking, grooming themselves or each other and having sex. While cheetah exhibit some of these behaviors, it is noteworthy that when it comes to scanning for prey they almost always sit. Being very tall cats that typically hunt on an open plain in broad daylight, and with a visual acuity that far surpasses all other cats, sitting enables them to better detect prey that are several kilometers away than is possible when lying down.
Scanning the horizon while sitting may be a learned behavior as it is not uncommon to see a female cheetah doing so while her young exhibit the larger cat-like behavior of lying down, as in this case. As the cubs age and start to engage increasingly in scanning they too typically adopt a sitting posture.
It is not uncommon to see a female cheetah with her maturing young sitting together with each scanning in a different direction. Are they working cooperatively to divide up the visual field or are they just acting independently I do not know? Often they will choose the highest point in the immediate landscape from which to do their scanning, be it a hillock, a termite mound or on rare occasions the top of a tourist safari vehicle. This photo was taken in Amboseli NP in Kenya.
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