The lone cheetah cub has adopted the orphans, who are the babies of a woman who died in childbirth.
Lonely Cheetah Finds Companionship with Orphaned Cubs
According to a Cincinnati Zoo blog post, the young male cheetah whose mother was unable to care for him at the Nature Safari in Winston, Oregon, will join the four cubs at the Cincinnati Zoo in the coming weeks.
The Cincinnati Zoo cubs were born prematurely in Phase C and are still under critical care supervision, so they will not mingle with their newly adopted siblings until they are in proper condition.
The cubs, underweight, underdeveloped, and with weak immune structures, struggled to survive their first week.
The Cincinnati Zoo staff team is currently bottle-feeding the cubs and brought in a nursery dog named “Blakely,” an Australian Shepherd, to provide the important task of “snuggling, comforting, and giving them a body to climb on.”
Initially, there were five cubs, but a sixth, the tiniest cub, died on March 29.
Christina Gorsuch, curator of mammals at the Cincinnati Zoo, said on the zoo’s blog that they welcomed the lone Oregon cheetah because newborn cheetahs want to socialize with other cubs.
“Socialization and companionship, preferably with other cheetahs, is essential at this age,” Gorsuch said. Blakely and the other cubs will shower this child with love and fun.
The Wildlife Safari and Cincinnati Zoo are part of the Breeding Center Coalition, a wildlife conservation organization whose project is to “maintain a sustainable population of cheetahs to ensure that the fastest living land animal does not become extinct.”