At Prague Zoo, five cheetah cubs born on 18 June are successfully making it through their first months of life, despite heavy downpours and their mother's illness. The seven-year-old female named Daenerys became a mother for the first time and, despite her inexperience, showed exceptional care: she gave birth in an open enclosure, and when storms soon struck, she licked the water off the cubs' fluffy coats, preventing hypothermia and pneumonia.
Four males and one female already look lively and healthy. In August, Daenerys suffered an intestinal infection, but the family overcame this trial as well. According to mammal curator Pavel Brandl, everything is going well now, but it will be about another year before there is full confidence in their survival β a critical period for cheetahs in captivity and in the wild.
This is Prague's first successful cheetah breeding in eight years. Since the year 2020, European breeding programmes have been experiencing a decline, but this year has seen a turn for the better. Every cub here is especially valuable: in the wild, the cheetah population has shrunk to roughly seven thousand individuals, and cub mortality is high because of predators and disease.
Daenerys herself arrived in Prague from France in a weakened state, and until recently it seemed she would never have offspring. Her current maternal devotion has come as a pleasant surprise to the staff. The zoo is gradually preparing the cubs to be shown to visitors β from the beginning of next week they will move to an accessible enclosure next to the predators' pavilion.
Stories like this remind us that conserving rare species requires not only conservation measures in the wild, but also painstaking work in zoos, where every successfully raised cub becomes a contribution to the future of the species.
