Relationship with mother ‘complex’ but Kuno’s only cheetah cub has many guardians

“We are working towards ensuring the survival of the cub. I saw it 15 days ago; it is healthy and eating well. We expect to shift it to a bigger enclosure, and in a year’s time, it may learn to hunt on its own. Since it was separated from its mother, it will take time. We have experience with tiger cubs learning to hunt on their own within two years,” Cheetah Steering Committee head Dr Rajesh Gopal told The Indian Express.

The cub’s mother is known to avoid human contact and is considered a good hunter. It gave birth to four cubs after a mating interaction with Gaurav, part of a coalition of cheetahs known in Kuno as the Rockstars.

Wildlife officials had celebrated the birth of the cubs by releasing their video on mother’s day. But their joy was short-lived as “temperatures crossed 45 degrees after May 15”, when Jwala began hunting while the cubs followed.

Wildlife officials said that on May 22, temperatures crossed 47 degrees, and the next day Jwala lost its first cub. With no respite in the heat, two other cubs died, while the sole survivor walked on with its mother.

According to an official, as the last cub “showed signs of exhaustion and weakness, wildlife officials took the decision to remove it from its mother for a medical examination”. While Jwala was busy with a recent kill, a “veterinarian showed extreme courage and picked up the cub from the lap of its mother”.

The cub was dehydrated and weighed around 1.5 kg, but it recovered within a week. Due to the extreme heat, its reunion with Jwala was put off. On July 1, the cub was brought to a quarantine bomma and was “very excited to see its mother”, having spent eight days away.

Jwala, on the other hand, gave “confusing signals as it sniffed the cub and sat at a distance”. Exhausted from crying for its mother, the cub was taken to the hospital compound. The next two days, the same scenes played out. On June 4, a reunion was organised without a fence, accompanied by two veterinarians while a monitoring team watched on the cameras.

“Everyone was stunned with what happened next. Jwala attacked the cub and was very aggressive. The tension was high in the room as a tree branch covered the cameras and we could not see what happened next. We thought we had lost the only remaining cub,” said Kuno Divisional Forest Officer (DFO) Prakash Kumar.

The cub was saved by the two vets, and has since been kept at a small enclosure alongside its mother’s, separated by a 30-metre fence. Their every movement is recorded by trap cameras, and their relationship is described as “complex at best”.

DFO Kumar said the cub is fed twice a day and its diet is decided by the vets with “extra care”.

“Its observation is done twice a day and it currently weighs more than 4 kg. We have seen its interaction with the mother and unfortunately we cannot leave them alone. The cub interacts with the doctor who comes to visit,” the DFO said.

Kuno Director Uttam Sharma told The Indian Express the cub is “supposed to learn how to hunt with its mother”, and wildlife authorities have no option but to wait. “We have experience of re-wilding tigers. There were two orphan tiger cubs that learned how to hunt. But in that case, they had never been with their mother.”

South African cheetah expert Adrian Tordiffe said there have been many successful examples of human-raised cheetahs that were released into the wild and learnt how to hunt.

“It depends on individuals, some of them have a strong instinct to hunt. They have to hunt smaller prey and work their way up to larger ones. The problem with these cheetahs is that sometimes they associate humans with food. They may walk right up to people looking for food, and in a hostile environment that can get them into trouble,” Tordiff said.

It was a year ago, on September 17, that 20 cheetahs from Namibia and South Africa were relocated to Kuno National Park. Six have died since March this year.