It's dinnertime and Tumai swoops into her den, bares her teeth, grabs a cow bone from a plastic dish and disappears with it into the tall grass behind her. Tumai is an 8-year-old female cheetah whose name in Swahili means "Hope." She and Zazi ("Fertile"), a 7-year-old female, moved into the National Zoo's new Cheetah Science Facility this past September.
"We thought they might be stressed by the new environment, but they took to it right away," says biologist Adrienne Crosier, who runs the nine-acre complex. It is part of the National Zoo's Conservation and Research Center, a 3,200-acre facility in the foothills of Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains where some 30 species of rare or endangered animals—North America's black-footed ferret and Asia's red panda, Eld's deer and clouded leopard, among others—are studied and bred.
"What we have is space, and minimal public disturbances," says David Wildt, head of the zoo's Center for Species Survival and an authority on cheetahs. "The cheetahs are able to focus on why they're here."
They are here to breed. Within the captive cheetah population of 225 in the United States and Canada, the death rate has exceeded the birth rate during 10 of the past 12 years. The center's near-term goal is to make cheetahs self-sustaining in captivity. The long-term goal, says Wildt, is to "have it all"—to improve captive cheetahs' meager genetic diversity with sperm from wild cats and to use sperm from captive cheetahs to impregnate females in the wild.
Last year, Crosier went to Namibia and, with Laurie Marker, grew embryos in a lab; they hope to implant them into cheetahs within two to three years. By the end of this year, Crosier expects both Tumai and Zazi to give birth after artificial insemination via frozen sperm from two Namibian males. "There have been a lot of advances recently to improve the survivability of sperm after thaw," Crosier says. "At the same time, we have found that older females like Tumai can still produce good-quality eggs." In 2004, Tumai produced the first cheetah litter ever born at the National Zoo, and Zazi gave birth to five cubs the next year. Both litters were sired naturally.
The new cheetah center can accommodate up to ten females, in individual enclosures, and four males, alone or in groups. The females' yards flank a central avenue known as "lover's lane," where males parade so that the females can choose their partners from among them.
Virtually all cheetahs in the United States are descended from South African animals, and their genes are probably even less diverse than those of wild cheetahs. Breeding cheetahs—whether via lover's lane or artificial insemination—is highly problematic, but the rewards, Crosier says, are priceless. "This is where you get to save a species. This is where you get to make babies."
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Comments (9)
33 babies because i know its origally 6 cubs maybe a full two generations.
Posted by mj on May 3,2011 | 02:38 PM
Hello,
My name is Julianna, I love cheetahs! They're my favorite kind of animal! In the future i wish to breed them in hope to save them from extintion. Please email me to tell me more about them.
Posted by Julianna on April 20,2011 | 10:48 AM
I love that you are helping this amazing cat breed!!!!! I'm from South-Africa and a friend of mine has succesfully bred: lions, white lion, Bengal tigers, Siberian tigers, but just can't get the cheetas to breed??? Can you help us, HELP SAVE THE CHEETAS!!! and do our bit for nature!!!! Any information wil help us dearliy. Thanks
Posted by Nico Meyer on May 3,2010 | 07:01 AM
Nathan, I've been doing research on Cheetahs for my class, and what I've found is that they can have litters of 1-6 cubs, and average ~3.5 cubs/litter.
Information found from published article:
Kelly, Marcella J and Sarah M. Durant. 2000. Viability of the Serengeti Cheetah Population. Conservation Biology 14: 786-797.
Posted by Dorie on December 2,2009 | 04:02 PM
My daughter and her husband just returned from a photo safari in S. Africa and met the problem of the cheetah first hand. I then found the articles about cheetahs in the March 2008 issue of the Smithsonian and it is so informative and I wish more could learn of the fate of the cheetahs. Good luck and continue to support the program.
Thanks, C Murphy
Posted by Charles Murphy on August 22,2009 | 02:52 PM
How many babbies can a cheetah have at a time
Posted by Nathan Appelbaum on February 9,2009 | 12:26 PM
you guys are the bestest cheetah breeding program ever SAVE THE CHEETAHS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Posted by on November 21,2008 | 12:17 PM
i luv cheetahs! <33
Posted by Vanessa on October 15,2008 | 04:33 PM
I enjoyed your article on breeding Cheetahs. i was one of the many who followed Tumai and Zazi's litters on the Cheetah cam at the National Zoo and was sorry when they were sent to other zoos. Thank you for continuing to help this beautiful breed.
Posted by Michele Rosenberg on March 4,2008 | 10:39 AM
ohhh! I love that article you know the one about the bredding cheetahs please email me back. I want to know more about cheetahs!!!!!!!!
Posted by Malia on February 26,2008 | 08:36 PM