The cheetah has a slender, long-legged body built for speed. The fastest of all land animals, cheetahs can run up to 70 miles per hour in pursuit of their prey. A cheetah's maximum stride length is around twenty-two feet, with almost half of that distance traveled fully airborne! The cheetah uses vast amounts of energy chasing its prey and is susceptible to having its meal stolen by animals such as the leopard and hyena as it is not a good fighter. Once found throughout Africa and Asia, the cheetah has been sharply reduced through hunting and habitat destruction to sub-Saharan Africa with a small population in Iran. Only around 12,000 cheetahs are left in all of Africa, and another 200 left in Iran. Cheetahs have been around for at least three million years, before any of the other cats. Many people are working hard to see that they don't disappear altogether.