Tanzania Carnivores

Earlier this year we had some very exciting news from one of our Cheetah Watch contributors, Mike Mockler.  One of the cheetah females known to the project – AH140 – was seen with her cubs on the causeway between Lake Ndutu and Lake Masek, but instead of having two cubs, she suddenly had three!  The extra cub looked a few months younger than the other two and seemed a little uncomfortable, the reason being that he is not related to the rest of this little family and has been adopted!!!  Where did he come from?  How did he lose his birth mother?  Who was his birth mother?! We may never know the answer to any of these questions but, the most important thing now is that he is being looked after!

AH140 was first introduced to the project when she was seen by a safari group in November 2002.  Luckily they sent their photos into the Cheetah Watch campaign because she wasn’t seen by the Cheetah Project until more than 2 years later in January 2005!  Since then she has remained elusive and has only been seen a handful of times, although we do know that she has already successfully raised two male cubs who reached independence in late 2008.  We were introduced to this, her second litter in November 2009 when the two original cubs were about six months old.

Although it is unusual for a cheetah mother to adopt a cub, it does make sense for them to do so.  Cubs are left by their mothers to fend for themselves when they are about 18 months old, after which the siblings stay together for another six months.  The more siblings there are, the higher their chances of survival as it means there are more eyes to look out for danger and more of them to catch prey.  So, although it means that AH140 has another mouth to feed and another cub to look after, it probably is in the long term best interests of her other cubs.

When they were last seen this little family was doing well and they are a great example of how the Cheetah Watch campaign really does contribute some very interesting and very important data!