The world is celebrating four tiny cheetah tots recently born in India, marking the first time a cheetah has been born in the country in 70 years! Better yet, South African cheetahs helped make the dream come true…
Kuno National Park, India (31 March, 2023) — For reasons beyond their cuteness, four cheetah cubs have the world, and particularly India, celebrating.
The pawsome are the first cheetah cubs born in India in 70 odd years after the Asiatic cheetah became extinct in the region back in the 1950s.
But, India needed a little help from their friends to spur the cheetah repopulation project. So, Namibia and South Africa responded to the call.
Last year, 8 Namibian cheetahs were brought over to Kuno National Park in what was shared as the first intercontinental relocation of cheetahs.’ The cats were so slick they even got an airplane nick-named after their 11-hour flight, ‘Cat Plane’.
Later on, another 12 cheetahs from South Africa would join the clowder.
In celebration of the births, India’s Environmental Minister, Bhupender Yadav, took to share a few sneak peaks on Twitter recently; calling the moment “a momentous event in [the country’s] wildlife conservation history.”
Wonderful news. https://t.co/oPvVBNlhqC
— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) March 29, 2023
The tiny cheetahs have already stolen the internet’s hearts, and we’re not saying it has to happen, but if they could be named after the Cheetah Girls, we wouldn’t be mad.
Why Did Cheetahs Go Extinct in India?
The short answer is that decades ago, the Asiatic cheetah roamed Indian planes. However, in 1947, the last of its kind was believed to have been shot by an Indian prince, Maharaja Ramanuj Pratap Singh Deo. A few years later, the entire species was deemed extinct.
Cheetah Cubs and Repopulation Elsewhere
These cheetahs join other translocation projects from South Africa, like the Liwonde National Park mission in 2018. This effort helped revive the threatened species as the first wild cubs to be born in Malawi in 20 years.
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