Scientific research done by a team of scholars from St. Petersburg State University has revealed the stunning notion that all cheetahs contain very similar genomes. This closeness is one of the reasons that support the fact that the main cause of rapid cheetah population decline and why they persist on dying from viruses. Upon coming to this conclusion, the team decoded the genomes of seven different cheetahs and then proceeded to reassemble entire whole genome sequences. The results yielded the fact that their loss of genetic diversity has amounted to a whopping 90-99%. These scientists had to go back several thousand years and analyze their demographic history, which showed this species had had two major population declines before, one 100,000 years ago and another 10,000-15,000 years ago. The first time was due to migration, however the time still remains unknown. The scholars came to the consensus that this reasoning explains why cheetah transplants almost always work, due to similar gene structure easily accepting the other's organ. Yet still, some of these genes appear to be broken, which gives way to the fact that they so often die from viruses that many other feline family members would regularly survive.
http://rbth.com/science_and_tech/2015/12/10/inbreeding-threatens-cheetah-population-with-extinction_549601
http://rbth.com/science_and_tech/2015/12/10/inbreeding-threatens-cheetah-population-with-extinction_549601