🐆
Cheetah
Acinonyx jubatus
Carnivores · Vulnerable
vs
🦁
Lion
Panthera leo
Carnivores · Vulnerable
18 clips name both of them
23 million views between them.
Lion outweighs Cheetah 2.9× — 149 kg against 50.6 kg. Both figures are averages across males and females.
To scale
Grid at 50 cm
50 cm
1 m
1.5 m
2 m
Silhouettes: PhyloPic — Lukasiniho (CC BY-NC-SA); others CC0.
Cheetah
0.80 m
at the shoulder
Human
1.70 m
full standing height
for scale
Lion
1.15 m
at the shoulder
Tale of the tape
Body mass
51 kg
🐆 Cheetah · COMBINE
149 kg
🦁 Lion · COMBINE
Shoulder height
0.8 m
🐆 Cheetah
1.15 m
🦁 Lion
Body length
1.49 m
🐆 Cheetah · COMBINE
2.17 m
🦁 Lion · COMBINE
Top speed
104 km/h
🐆 Cheetah
55 km/h
🦁 Lion
Bite force
472 N
🐆 Cheetah
1,768 N
🦁 Lion
Maximum lifespan
20 yr
🐆 Cheetah · COMBINE
30 yr
🦁 Lion · COMBINE
Bars are sized against the larger of the two figures. Bite force figures come from individual studies and vary a lot between sources.
Animals caught on camera
Real footage of the animals on this site — hunting, fighting, and getting on with it.
Shared ancestry
The closest group they share is Felidae (family), home to 91 species.
They last shared an ancestor about 6.8 million years ago.
Estimates range from 5.7 to 7.8 million years; the figure above is the middle estimate.
About this estimate
Dates from Upham, Esselstyn & Jetz 2019, PLoS Biology 17:e3000494 (CC0).