Feb 15th, 2016: Making Cheetahs

[xoxoxoBruce]

Addison, a Cheetah at San Diego Zoo Global’s off-exhibit Cheetah Breeding Center, pleased the zooers... zooies... zooists... keepers,
when she dropped four kits with her first litter. They all praised her but she said, Meh, hold my beer and watch this.
She then at eight years old, dropped her second litter of six little furballs. The record is eight.

The keepers work closely with the adult cheetahs, but as Jillian explains, “this is the first litter we have tried to socialize. It’s challenging with six—they play off of each other and are very active.” In order to work with the cubs, Addison is moved to an adjacent pen where she can see what’s going on. “She seems to be quite comfortable with us interacting with the cubs,” says Jillian. “She’s a very calm cheetah by nature, and since this isn’t her first litter, we had a relationship established with her. But we always watch her reaction and base what we do on Addison’s comfort level.”

Are you kidding me, she was glad for a break. Besides, they were in good hands, in the wild 90% of the cubs don't
make three months, 50% to predators and 40% to lack of genetic diversity, because....

Cheetahs are found in Africa and a small portion of Iran. It’s estimated that the worldwide population of cheetahs has dwindled from 100,000 in 1900 to only 10,000 today—with about 10 percent of those cats living in zoos or wildlife parks. They are classified as vulnerable on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) Red List.

See what I mean. "Please take them for socializing... pretty please... with honey on it?"

San Diego Zoo Global, which has been breeding cheetahs for more than 40 years and has had more than 135 cubs, was instrumental in the formation of a Breeding Center Coalition (BCC) to create a sustainable cheetah population that will prevent extinction of the world’s fastest land animal. There are eight other organizations participating in the breeding program for this endangered species: Fossil Rim Wildlife Center in Glen Rose, Texas; White Oak Conservation Center in Yulee, Florida; The Wilds and the Cincinnati Zoo in Ohio; the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute in Front Royal, Virginia; the St. Louis Zoo; the Wildlife Safari in Oregon; and Omaha’s Henry Doorly Zoo in Nebraska.

Sounds like a Cheetah breeding super-pac, would that be Cheetahing?

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Aside - I finished this post an hour and a half ago, but every time I clicked on the link button, the sumbitch would freeze.
After diddling it a little, it would give me a can't open this page screen. So I'd back up and try again, until it closed this page,
then each of the other two pages I had open. Then I lost my internet connection completely, and had to call Verizon to get
the router they installed yesterday morning working again.
And because it was two in the morning, they hooked me to a tech in Texas, I think he was saying in Austin, but you know
how hard it is to understand those people.