[Zziggywolf5]

:; pokes Ziggy:: Post, biological slave.

If you say so...

Oh, wait. Do you mean you want a question?
Uh... what happens to the hydrogen toward the center of Jupiter?

[Zoo]

It's compressed into liquid form.

[Rylkan]

Won't answer, simply because we don't know for sure exactly what happens. But it's pretty well established that as Zoo said there is a layer that is in liquid form. Deeper down though, we're not as sure.

[Zziggywolf5]

I was looking for metallic hydrogen, but I'll give it to Zoo since it was a poorly worded question.

[Zoo]

Why are cheetahs all almost nearly genetically identical?

[Rylkan]

Does it have to do with the fact that they are prone to genetic defects that kill a good number of the cubs. So I would assume that means most mutations in the gene pool would be weeded out, leaving a very homogeneous species on average.

[Jake]

Inbreeding

[Zoo]

Rylkan: No, they're seriously near-identical, you can take a skin graft from one cheetah and put it on an apparently completely unrelated one, and it's not rejected (nor is a graft from that individual, as expected, but one from a domestic cat is rejected; the immune system doesn't recognize that other-cheetah graft as other, but as self). Beginning with a diverse gene pool will not lead to this degree of similarity.

Jake: Technically, but why did they begin inbreeding?

[Jake]

No clue. My guess is that it's because cheetahs are incredibly rare.

[Zoo]

That's closer than you know .

[Zoo]

Hint: There was an event.

[Rylkan]

Since he hasn't replied, I'm going to take a shot in the dark. Since we're talking of an event, and inbreeding, I am going to assume one of two possibilities. Either lack of available mates due to human interference at some point (i.e. Hunting them to near extinction) or Humans interfered and tried to breed them and similarly caused a problem due to inbreeding that caused the genepool to become a bit shallow.

[Zoo]

Nope, nothing to do with humans this time.

[Jake]

An event... not caused by humans.

I'm assuming it was some sort of mass extinction (or a time period when alot of animals died) of some sort. I doubt cheetahs were around 65 million years ago. So my guess is the ice age brought them to near extinction and caused massive inbreeding. Either that or some sort of disease killed all but a few.

[Zoo]

An event... not caused by humans.

I'm assuming it was some sort of mass extinction (or a time period when alot of animals died) of some sort. I doubt cheetahs were around 65 million years ago. So my guess is the ice age brought them to near extinction and caused massive inbreeding. Either that or some sort of disease killed all but a few.

Well, there was a bottleneck that coincided with the end of the last ice age. . . whether it was caused by it is not exactly known, but you can have it . It's believed this might have reduced the cheetah population to literally just a few. As an aside, North American cheetahs existed from ~3.5mya, and African cheetahs (which is actually the fourth species in the group) arose not too long after that.