India’s lone cheetah cub — the first to be born in the country in the last 75 years — is active and healthy after recovering from a serious bout of heat stress, according to the forest officials at Kuno National Park. The cub, now 5.5 months old, is the only one to pull through out of the batch of four who perished during the peak of summer in May.
“The cub has spent more than 100 days living alongside her mother. She is very active and healthy, has gained weight and is on the regular growth path. Born on Indian soil, she is the future of cheetahs in the country,” the department said.
Though the cub is in close vicinity of its mother, the two have been kept separately in adjoining enclosures with a 30-metre-long fence dividing their existence. The decision to separate them was taken in June after the mother rejected her young one when an attempt was made to reunite them. Over the last three months, the forest officials have kept a close watch on the two felines using field cameras.
SO CLOSE YET SO FAR
Experts say the relationship between a mother and her young one can be complex in carnivores, especially in the circumstances at Kuno. There is always a risk of being rejected by the mother post a separation. If that happens, it becomes important to act quickly as the mother could start pawing her young or even resort to aggression to push it away.
In order to minimise the risk, the forest officials had taken a step-by-step approach to gradually reunite the cub with its mother after eight days of separation in May. Initially they were kept in separate enclosures (bomas) with a fence dividing them to see if the mother reacted positively to her young. However, the signals were confusing — while the young one tried to come close to the mother cheetah, the latter distanced away after sniffing the cub briefly.
The mother cheetah reacted aggressively when the cub was released in her enclosure during the second such attempt a few days later. Though the little one was unharmed, it was immediately removed. Since then, the two have been kept separately in soft release bomas separated by a fence where they can still see each other. Since the cub is being hand-raised, the park management will need to prepare it for survival in the wild. But before that it will be moved to a much larger enclosure.
ONE YEAR OF HISTORIC TRANSLOCATION
India had airlifted a total of eight cheetahs from Namibia in a historic translocation conducted in September 2022 to revive the species in the country, followed by 12 more from South Africa in February.
In March, one of the female Namibian cats, Siyayya, later renamed Jwala, gave birth to four cubs. However, three of them died two months later when temperatures crossed 45℃ in Kuno in Madhya Pradesh in May. The fourth one was still moving with the mother cheetah — all weak and dehydrated weighing just 1.5 kgs when it was rescued and put under veterinary care.
As many as six cheetahs and three cubs have died within the first year of translocation at Madhya Pradesh’s Kuno National Park. All the 14 remaining cheetahs, along with the cub, are currently in enclosures after they were re-captured from the wild two months ago. Their radio collars were removed when some of them were diagnosed with skin issues, which proved fatal for three of them in July. The deaths were confirmed to be caused by ‘winter coat’ — a thick layer of skin that African cats develop ahead of winter, which proved to be a killer in India’s humid monsoon.
Though the extended captivity is adding to the animal stress, the officials are wary of more such infections and are waiting for the monsoon season to end to release the cheetahs back into the wild.