Cheetah cubs grow
up surviving against all odds
How do you stay alive in a landscape filled with stronger predators, where lions
or hyenas will kill your offspring, and jackals or vultures will steal your
food? You keep moving. Binti, a new mother, gently nabs one of her ten-day-old
cubs by the scruff of the neck. Although mother and cub are protected from human
harm in Kenya's Masai Mara National Reserve, they must still combat a harsh
world. Binti learned maternal skills from a peerless teacher her mother, Amani.
"Amani's practical, cool, efficient," says Anup Shah, who documented and named
her growing family over three years.
Binti owes her survival to Amani's faithful routine. At about six months Binti
actively began lear-ning how to hunt. So will her offspring. Cheetahs like a
fresh kill and must pursue and catch their prey. Cubs are good observers,
watching their mother whether she's scouting for prey, sharpening her claws, or
stalking potential dinner.
When the family needs to eat, Amani climbs atop a nearby termite mound to survey
the undulating plain. A Thom-son's gazelle has strayed from its herd. Amani
focuses her amber eyes. The gazelles continue to graze. Amani crouches,
shou-lders hunched, ears flat back, frozen. A few steps propel her into a run.
Her speed builds, and within seconds she reaches full sprint. She sails across
the savanna, often airborne, a symphony of speed and grace.
But the gazelle has a head start. Clocking speeds nearly as fast as the
cheetah's 60-plus miles (100 kilometers) an hour, the gazelle makes quick turns
intended to throw Amani off. Despite being the world's fastest land animal, a
cheetah snags such prey only about half the time. This is one of the good times.
Amani trips the gazelle with an outstretched paw. With one last bleat, the
gazelle goes down. Amani goes for the throat, her bite suffocating the prize.
Over the next several months the sharp-eyed cubs will try to emulate Amani's
beha-vior and fail miserably, mainly because their prey notices their awkward
approaches. So mother makes them practice, over and over.
"Successful mothers seem to produce really successful cubs," says Marcella
Kelly, a professor at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University who
has tracked female cheetah lineages for up to eight generations. "They're
nervous, excitable, vigilant. In the wild they need to be jumpy. Cubs most
likely pick up these traits."
Once young cheetahs are on their own, it can take months for them to become
skilled hunters. Some adolescent cheetahs start out hunting impossible prey,
including buffalo. Those who learn from their mistakes survive. Among Amani's
successes is her daughter: Binti had her five cubs in the same area where Amani
gave birth to her.
Cheetah fact file
The fastest land animal on Earth is running the most critical race of its life
the race for survival. The cheetah capable of reaching 60-plus (100 kilometers)
miles an hour in seconds is finding it harder to outrun increasing pressure from
humans and land encroachment. Fewer than 15,000 cheetahs now remain in the wild,
according to the Cheetah Conservation Fund (CCF).
Unlike the protected cheetahs in Kenya's Masai Mara National Reserve, cheetahs
in Namibia live mostly in unprotected areas. Though Namibia boasts the largest
number of cheetahs in the world, increasing numbers of farms have cut into
cheetah territory, making conflict inevitable. The cheetah's natural prey base,
like the kudu, has declined as well. Both factors have contributed to cheetahs
attacking farmers' livestock, leading farmers in the 1980s to kill at least some
7,000 cheetahs, and, according to CCF, subsequently halving the Namibian cheetah
popu-lation. CCF has been working with farmers since 1991 to develop alternative
livestock and game management practices to reduce conflict, as well as relocate
cheetahs to other ranges. The group has created an incentive program to benefit
farmers who don't harm cheetahs. CCF is encouraging the creation of
conservancies, where farmers cooperatively manage wildlife and ensure habitat
and prey base for cheetahs.
A lack of genetic variation, which makes the individual animals more susceptible
to disease and death, also threatens the cheetah population. Captive breeding
programs have attempted to mate animals, but many males, already inbred, suffer
from poor sperm quality and have difficulties producing offspring. CCF has
experi-mented using artificial insemination technologies from cheetahs around
the world in captive breeding programmes.