A lonely cheetah cub is joining a litter of orphaned newborns who lost their mother after she died giving birth to them.
According to a Cincinnati Zoo blog post, the young male cheetah whose mother was unable to look after him at the Wildlife Safari in Winston, Oregon is joining Cincinnati Zoo’s four baby cubs in the next few weeks.
The Cincinnati Zoo cubs were born prematurely via C-section and are still in critical care supervision so they won’t be mingling with their new adopted sibling until they’re in good health.
The cubs – underweight, underdeveloped and with weak immune systems – struggled for survival their first week.
The Cincinnati Zoo staff are currently bottle feeding the cubs and brought in a nursery dog named “Blakely,” an Australian shepherd, to provide the vital task of “snuggling, comfort and a body to climb” for the cubs.
Originally, there were five baby cubs but a sixth, the smallest cub, died March 29.
Christina Gorsuch, curator of mammals at the Cincinnati Zoo, said on the zoo’s blog that they welcome the lonely cheetah from Oregon because newborn cheetahs need to socialize with other cubs.
The Wildlife Safari and the Cincinnati Zoo belong to Breeding Center Coalition, a wildlife conservation organization whose mission is to “maintain a sustainable cheetah population to ensure the fastest land animal in existence doesn’t go extinct.”
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