Why Do Cheetahs Have Tear Marks? The Black Lines Explained

What are cheetah tear marks?

Tear marks are two solid black stripes on the cheetah’s face. Each one starts at the inner corner of an eye and runs down along the side of the nose to the corner of the mouth, so the cat looks as if it has been crying dark tears. They are also called tear lines, tear streaks or malar stripes.

The marks are part of the normal coat pattern and every cheetah has them, adults and cubs alike. Among the big cats they are unique to the cheetah. Many smaller cats, from domestic tabbies to servals, have some dark lines around the eyes, but few have such a bold, unbroken stripe from eye to mouth that makes a cheetah’s face so recognizable.

Underneath, the fur of the face is pale buff to white around the mouth and chin. That pale background makes the black lines stand out even more strongly.

Why do cheetahs have tear marks? The main ideas

Scientists have proposed several explanations. They are not mutually exclusive, and more than one may be true.

Reducing sun glare

Cheetahs are unusual among big cats because they hunt mostly in daylight, especially in the morning and late afternoon. Hunting by day helps them avoid lions and spotted hyenas, which are more active at night, but it means chasing prey across open plains under a bright African sun.

The glare idea suggests the black fur works like the dark grease some athletes smear under their eyes. Black absorbs light instead of reflecting it, so less stray light would bounce up from the cheeks into the eyes. Small studies on people have suggested that dark grease under the eyes can slightly reduce glare, which makes the idea believable, but no one has measured the effect in cheetahs.

Interestingly, a similar idea has been tested in a bird. Peregrine falcons have a dark stripe below each eye, and a study published in 2021 found that the stripe tends to be larger and darker in populations living in sunnier parts of the world. That supports the general idea that dark facial markings can be linked to sunlight, though it does not prove what the stripes do for cheetahs.

Helping the cheetah focus on prey

A related suggestion is that the lines help a cheetah lock onto its target. A cheetah typically stalks to within a few dozen meters of an antelope, then sprints, often at speeds above 90 km/h (56 mph). The lines might work a little like the sights on a rifle, leading the eye toward what is straight ahead. This is an attractive idea, but it is speculative and has never been tested.

Making faces easier to read

Cheetahs communicate with each other at close range: mothers with cubs, and brothers living together in male groups called coalitions. Dark lines around the eyes and mouth exaggerate the shape of the face, so small changes in expression could be easier to see. Researchers have noted that the tear streaks sharply define the cheetah’s expressions at close quarters, but how much cheetahs rely on this is unknown.

Do tear marks help cheetahs see better?

We don’t know, and it is worth being honest about that. Many websites state as fact that tear marks “work like sunglasses” or “act as a rifle scope”. These are hypotheses, not findings. Cheetahs do have excellent daytime vision, with a band of densely packed light-sensitive cells across the retina that helps them scan the horizon, but that is a feature of the eye itself rather than the fur around it.

It is also possible that the marks have more than one role, or that they evolved for one reason and are now kept for another. Facial markings are common across the cat family, and the cheetah’s version may simply be an especially bold form of a pattern its ancestors already had.

How tear marks tell a cheetah from a leopard

The tear marks are the fastest field mark for separating a cheetah from a leopard, two spotted cats that people often confuse.

• Face: cheetahs have the black eye-to-mouth lines; leopards do not.
• Spots: cheetahs have solid, round black spots; leopards have rosettes, rings of dark marks around a lighter center.
• Build: cheetahs are slender and long-legged with a small head; leopards are stockier and more muscular, with a bigger head.

For a full side-by-side guide, see cheetah vs leopard.

Cheetah coat patterns and the king cheetah

Apart from the face, a cheetah’s coat is pale yellow to tan, covered with roughly 2,000 solid black spots. The tail is spotted for most of its length and ends in several dark rings and a white tip. Spot patterns differ from one animal to the next, so researchers can identify individual cheetahs from photographs.

Cubs look different. For their first few months they are dark, with a long mantle of smoky-gray fur along the back, a coat that may help hide them in long grass. Even at this age the tear marks are already there.

A rare variety called the king cheetah has large blotches that merge into dark stripes running along the back. It was once described as a separate species, but it is an ordinary cheetah carrying two copies of a recessive gene variant. In 2012, researchers showed that the pattern is linked to a gene called Taqpep, the same gene that turns striped tabby domestic cats into blotched “classic” tabbies. King cheetahs still have normal tear marks.

Myths and stories about tear marks

Myth: the marks are stains from real tears. They are pigmented fur, not tear stains, and they are present from birth.

Myth: scientists have proven that tear marks block glare. The glare idea is reasonable and often repeated, but it has not been tested in cheetahs.

A folk tale often retold in Africa explains the marks as the trace of a mother cheetah’s tears after a hunter stole her cubs. It is a story, not science, but it shows how striking these black lines are to anyone who sees a cheetah up close.

To learn how these daytime hunters use their extraordinary speed, read How fast is a cheetah?