"During his 49-year reign as an Indian in the 16th century, Akbar the Great had more than 39,000 cheetahs in total, which were called Khasa or the Imperial Cheetahs, and he kept detailed records of them (Caro 1994, Guggisberg 1975). However, all the cheetahs kept for hunting and coursing purposes were taken out of the wild from free-ranging populations. Because of this continuous drain on the wild populations, the numbers of cheetahs declined throughout Asia. In the early 1900s, India and Iran began to import cheetahs from Africa for hunting purposes (Pocock 1939). In Africa, the cheetah was important to many local ethnic groups: the ate cheetah meat for speed; traditional healers used cheetah foot bones for fleet-footedness; and kings wore cheetah skins for dignity (Nowell and Jackson 1996, Wrogemann 1975). These practices, combined with exportation to other countries, contributed to the beginning of the cheetah’s decline in Africa."