According to ZooBorns, there’s a new cheetah cub at Busch Gardens Tampa Bay, transferred from Jacksonville and and a mother who wouldn’t rear him. The cub, a male, is four weeks old:
He now has to be hand reared until he’s old enough to join the other cheetahs on “Cheetah Run”. Hand rearing a wild cat is no easy job. For one thing, they require frequent noms:
Here’s an appealing video of the little guy. Note his call, which sounds like a bird chirping. No other wild cat, to my knowledge, makes a sound like this. One reader theorized that it’s to camouflage the cub’s presence by making him sound like a bird. But then why don’t other savanna cats, like lions, also sound like that?
And, just for fun, a six-week ocelot cub trying to eschew a dental checkup. Note the more cat-like call. This female, named Evita, is at Seattle’s Woodland Park Zoo (video uploaded March 18). Perhaps Ophelia can go see her and report back!
Among my readers there must be someone who can help me in my quest to hold a wild cat cub!
h/t: Michael
So the ancestors of this little guy were all vegetarians before the “fall”, right?
Oh, of course. As soon as Eve bit that apple, there was a huge “wah-wah” Scooby Doo moment and the whole world shifted… but not so’s you’d notice it in the fossil record.
Years ago as an adolescent I gingerly, subtly broached to the pastor of my Southern Baptist the question why some animals were carnivores; why should not all animals be herbivores. His reply was to the effect that perhaps I should consider the current state of affairs having a connection to Man’s fall from grace.
That was the extent of the conversation; I was “accommodationist” in my tender years and, what with a few overbearing relatives to deal with over the longer haul, avoided confrontation when I could.
At that time, I also wondered why shouldn’t omni-nutritious manna from Heaven fall in such quantity and with such frequency that no fauna should ever hunger, eh?
I have helped you in your quest to hold a cub! I’ve given you advice: offer a selected zoo a Talk in exchange for a cub-holding opportunity. I think that could work. The trick is figuring out which zoos have cubs available for holding and which ones don’t have some adamant policy about not letting anyone not on the zoo staff hold a cub ever for any reason ever at all no matter what ever.
Zoos have educational departments. I’m sure there are many zoos that would be excited to have Professor Coyne do a talk.
That’s good advice….you should listen to Ophelia 😉
(also– my oldest was *thrilled* to see a post with a cheetah, his favorite:-)
The little pink paw pads surrounded by black (on the last video) are too cute.
It’s cute paws day.
The pink toes and the growling-loved the growling.
If you go to any lion parks in South Africa you are pretty likely to be allowed to hold cubs if they have any. They have a considerably more cavalier attitude toward their animals than we do, and seem to be pretty free with that stuff.
Cheetahs have some disadvantages which, I suspect, contribute to their decline, although not as significant as man’s contribution to their demise. Because they expend so much energy in bringing down a kill they are susceptible to having their prey stolen because they’re so exhausted and cannot stop the thief. As a result, cheetahs never prosper.
Groan! Very good!
Moar *groan*–another one for my dad…
Obviously I have a ‘dad’ sense of human (yet am progenyless)!
There has been a recent palaeontologigical fuss about cheetahs – or rather the genuine
ness or fakery of an ancestral cheetah – http://www.sciencemag.org.libproxy.ucl.ac.uk/content/330/6012/1740
This Science article from December says that ‘One paleontologist estimates that more than 80% of marine reptile specimens now on display in Chinese museums have been “altered or artificially combined to varying degrees.”‘
I wondered if any biologists or palaeontologists out there had come across fakes?
The cheetah fossil was recently defended –
http://www.sciencemag.org.libproxy.ucl.ac.uk/content/331/6021/1136.2.short
There’s a park in the Cape area of South Africa at which you can pet tiger cubs — for a fee of about $50. I kind of wish I had paid the money when I visited. I think I’ll go back there next time I’m there and pet some tigers.
They also had some cheetah cubs — making that squeeking call. The adults would always come check out the babies when they heard that call, just to make sure they were in no danger.
There! Problem solved.
I couldn’t remember the name of the park, so I just emailed my friends who run a guest house near there to ask.
My mother-in-law’s neighbour has a rescued cougar… It’s been declawed! You could pet it!
For about 0.3 seconds, before it bit your face off.
(Seriously, I didn’t know there was such a problem abandoned pet wild cats till I moved to the states… What is wrong with people?!? You can’t just declaw a cougar and expect it to be like a big kitty!)
They seriously de-clawed it & a vet agreed to do that??? To a wild animal????
Appalled of London.
I saw a whole tv program on that– people who keep tigers and anything else imaginable–which ought to be completely outlawed.
It *is* appalling, Dominic.
Adding my bit of speculation re: cub sounds: cheetahs are pretty much at the bottom of the predator ranking; cubs are easy prey because cheetahs are so frail they can’t defend them against hyenas, lions and the lot. Any creature would think twice before messing with lion cubs, so these don’t need to mask their presence.
Also the cub (& adult) chirps are short duration ~ much shorter than the growl of say a lion.
I suppose a short signal…
** is less likely to be intercepted by a predator
** is harder to analyse for direction & distance of the source