Cheetah Motherhood
Genny Garst
Listen to the story (MP3 audio, 2 minutes 26 seconds, 1.1 MB)
We enjoyed working with cheetahs a lot. That was kind of one of our favorite animals.
Actually, when we worked with the researchers that were working with the animals, and they’d given them names, then when we would get to know them and so we could know their characteristics, and it was kind of neat in that respect.
I remember one time we were working with a cheetah by the name of Bergeetah, and Shalor had named her; he had worked with her first of all and George Frame was now studying them.
Anyhow, we came across Bergeetah one day and she had five little cubs with her, and she would take off hunting, looking for things and wouldn’t find anything and then she’d sit down and wait for the cubs to come.
Four of them would get up there, but ol’ number five was always trailing behind. Finally when five would get there, she’d take off again. So poor ol’ number five never got a chance to rest.
So at a stop like this, she suddenly saw a hare, and she started after it. So Warren wanted to go up so we could film it when she caught it and fed it. So she caught it and the four were there eating, but number five wasn’t there.
So we went back and tried to find him, and George said probably that hyenas or something had already gotten him because he was no place at all.
We couldn’t find him at all. We knew where he had been left.
So we went home for lunch, and we watched her where she settled down for the afternoon and then came back and found her with these cubs and there were a few gazelles off in the distance but there were also male cheetahs so she didn’t bother with that.
But she’d made sort of a dog leg up to where she had caught the hare and she took a straight line back to where number five had been.
She chirped a little and out he came. And so she picked him up by the nape of the neck and started carrying him back to where the other four were.
But Shalor had stated that cheetahs didn’t know how to count, and they didn’t know how many kids they had. She knew how many she had and she knew exactly where they were.
I though that was really a very interesting thing myself.