Wildlife Conservation in Action – Cheetah – The fastest living cat, albeit a slow breeder

Yes, the cheetah is the fastest running animal alive with a speed of 70 miles per hour. No you can’t escape, even if you try, you need a freeway going car to get out of dodge if one is chasing you. And these wild cats learn to run at a very young age, even the pups are fast, agile and with a lot of energy.

Cheetahs are also very sociable and make all kinds of sounds, this is their form of communication. They use it when hunting, lounging, playing, and some of those sounds are mating calls, which also evoke biological responses.

There was an excellent article on this in a San Diego Zoological Society publication “ZooNooz” in their December 2009 issue titled; “Do You Hear What I Hear: New Cheetah Breeding Protocol” by Karyl Carmignani (Editor) along with excellent up-close photos of award-winning San Diego Zoo keeper and photographer Ken Bohn.

According to his article, zookeepers keep track of the sounds cheetahs make and know when a male and female are ready to mate. In fact, they have now recorded these sounds along with the others. And there are many according to the article; “purr, chirp, growl, growl, hiss, cough, moan” but it is the twittering that excites the female and “activates her biological functions to drop eggs” on her female parts and jump-start her reproductive system in full swing .

This is fascinating, and it’s great that the San Diego Zoo can use these sounds and speakers to help in this process, so that there are plenty of healthy offspring born at exactly the right time, even in captivity. It is surprising that the science of zoology is saving endangered species. Perhaps these techniques can be used to help other animals in the animal kingdom do the same?

Wildlife conservation is very important to species that are having a hard time in the wild, some due to invasion by mankind and / or hunting, and damage caused to the food chain by human activity. In fact, I hope you consider all of this when thinking about wildlife conservation.