Yup, that’s the point you just stay still and let it do whatever the fuck it wants that doesn’t involved you getting eaten.
REALLY FUN FACT for big cats cheetahs are fucking docile as shit
my grandfather ran a cheetah sanctuary in south africa and he’d just lie with them and sleep among them and they’d rub against him and chirp at him they’re big fucking babies
Another Fun Fact: Cheetahs are incredibly nervous animals. One of the (many) reason’s they’re going extinct is that cheetahs are so sensitive and nervous, some of them are literally too nervous to breed. Others will breed, but stress themselves out so much, they’ll lose their cubs.
So zoos with breeding programs had to figure out how to make cheetahs comfortable enough to first of all, get laid and secondly - not spazz themselves into miscarrying.
So what’d they do? They gave the cheetah’s their very own Service Dogs!
The dogs make them feel safe, protected and secure!
Also! Cheetahs are not in fact classified as big cats, they are simply very large lesser cats, due to the fact that they purr, meow, chirp, and cannot roar. Also many cheetahs have learned to recognize wildlife photographers are friends and not foes, so they will just come up to people and be friendly occasionally as pictured at the top of the chain. Some will even leave their Cubs with photographers to look after while they hunt. So. Yeah. Cheetahs are great
this works because cheetahs are actually fairly social animals, and they look to members of their group for context on how worried they should be about any given Situation. but since cheetahs are also nervous social animals, they can work each other into an anxiety spiral pretty easily over things like “being in an enclosed habitat” and “there’s a guy over there”.
so by introducing a dog as a member of the group, the cheetahs will now look to the dog for context clues on how worried they should be! and the dog Is Not Worried At All, Thanks, so the cheetahs think everything must be chill even if they were personally unsure about it, and they stop being so freaked out about literally everything.
Cheetah: oh god what’s going on how are we feeling weird spotless cheetah
Dog: :) fine, thanks
Cheetah: :) oh, okay
Wasn’t expecting this of all posts to be the first tumblr post I’ve ever seen crest 2mil notes, but I’ll take it