Madhya Pradesh wildlife officials are looking into a video that went viral on Saturday, showing a pack of cheetahs drinking liquid poured from a container by an unidentified man in Sheopur region. “We can't confirm the identity of the person, whether he is a ‘cheetah mitra’ or a local villager. We are looking into the veracity of the video,” said a senior wildlife official. Wildlife officials suspect the video shows female cheetah Jwala and its four cubs, which were in the locality after making a fresh kill. The video shows a man walking towards the animals resting under the shade of a tree. He places the container on the ground and urges the cheetah to drink by shouting multiple times. The herd proceeds to drink as the man looks on. This development comes after cheetah cubs were attacked in a nearby village by locals, who pelted stones at Jwala and its pack when they were resting in the tree shade near the Sheopur-Gwalior railway track. Word of the cheetah sighting spread quickly, and scores of villagers came on two-wheelers to the spot. As the pack tried to hunt a calf, the villagers chased them away back into the forests of Kuno. Wildlife officials have cautioned against making contact with cheetahs. "It is necessary that there is minimal human contact. If they get food and water from humans, then the animals would continue to stray into human settlements in search of food. This opens up danger to conflicts," said a wildlife officer. There are 17 cheetahs in Kuno's wild, including 11 Indian-born cubs. The ones that went on a stroll this time were Jwala and its four cubs, who were released from enclosures on February 21. The cheetah pack has been busy making kills in the wild ever since they were released into the wild.
