SELENKEI IN THE RESERVE

03/24/2022

Female cheetahs begin traveling with their cubs when they are 2.5-3 months old. By taking cubs around vast areas, females provide them with opportunity to learn different types of habitats, to experience encounters with prey, food competitors, predators, livestock and humans, including herders and tourists. Thereby, after reaching independence, adolescents will be able to settle in the familiar areas. The females, which their mothers brought to the Reserve, becoming mothers themselves, in turn, also bring their cubs to the Reserve. Maasai Mara National Reserve is known for intensive tourism. Through detailed observation of individuals born and raised in the Mara and coming from unprotected areas or from the Serengeti, we found that in order to be successful in the Mara, cheetahs must be tolerant to touring vehicles. Selenkei – Imani’s daughter, Amani’s granddaughter, Saba’s great granddaughter and Shakira’s great great granddaughter, gave birth in late November in Naboisho Conservancy, where she was spotted with 5 healthy babies. The family’s journey began with a visit to the OMС, and now Selenkei has brought her 3.5 months old cubs to the Reserve. Unfortunately, by then she had lost three cubs to predators. Apart from nutrition, the female must ensure the safety of the cubs. One of the behavioral adaptations of cheetahs is to hide the prey in the bush after the hunt so that the vultures and other food competitors could not detect the prey and cubs. If not disturbed, family can feed on the carcass for up to 8 hours and then leave the spot. Conversely, when settling down for the night, the female with cubs chooses an open place with a good view. By hunting in the presence of tourist vehicles, the female demonstrates the optimal strategies that will be useful to the cubs in adult life in the Mara. Today, Selenkei successfully hunted a male Thomson’s gazelle and the family ate for 5 hours, after which the female took the cubs to a meadow in one kilometer from the carcass.

                             



Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

01/02/2022

We are grateful to you – our friends, supporters and partners, from all over the world! Despite difficult times, you keep supporting our research and conservation efforts, and by doing so, you help to save one of the most endangered cats of Africa – the Cheetah. Thank you for your encouraging words and valuable advices, financial support and comprehensive help in difficult times! May the New 2022 Year bring you good health, success, peace, prosperity and happiness! We look forward to doing more in wildlife conservation this year! Cordially yours, Mara-Meru Cheetah Project team



RESY’s FAMILY TREE

12/08/2021

Although Resy’s pedigree is not very long, it begins in 2001, when we first observed a young female. We named her Resy because we found her near the Research Station. Since then, we have been keeping up the tradition naming all the surviving cubs with the letter R. Resy helped us develop an identification method based on the spot pattern on the front and hind legs, and became the first longest-lived female recorded in the Mara by 2012. She lived for 13 years and became the ancestor of the line, in which we now observe the 4th generation from her daughter Rosa along two branches: Rosetta and Rahisi. Resy disappeared in 2013, Rose in 2019. Rosetta raised her first and so far only litter at the age of 7. Her cubs – two brothers Ruka and Rafiki and sister Risasi are now exploring the Mara. Rahisi has raised only one litter at the age of 6: three males, and now she is raising a new litter. She spends most of her time in Tanzania, and rarely gets seen in the Mara. At the end of November, we observed her with five 5.5-month-old cubs, and two days ago, she appeared with only four. We hope that among the surviving cubs there will be females who will carry on Resy’s lineage.

                                 



FAMILY TREE OF SHAKIRA’S DESCENDANTS

10/17/2021

In the wild, it is difficult to reveal the paternity of cheetah offspring, since these cats are very secretive and it is not always possible to witness mating. In addition, a female during estrus can mate with several males, so that cubs from the same litter can have different fathers. Therefore, the pedigree can only be traced through female-line descendants on the basis of observation of mothers with cubs, who are individually identified. The spots on the limbs of the cubs are clearly visible from the first month of life, over time they become clearer and make it possible to identify the individual at any age. To continue the bloodline, females have to produce and successfully raise females in each generation. Some mothers in the Mara raised more males than females, like Rosetta (2 sons and one daughter) or Malaika (4 sons and one daughter in 3 litters), or even only males, like Nora (1 son), Naserian (1 son) and Miale (3 sons in 2 litters). One of the good examples of long and rich Pedigree is Shakira’s family tree: she raised 3 females in two litters, two of her daughters raised at least one daughter each, and each following generation of Shakira’s female-line descendants had at least one female in their litters. To date, we are observing the 7th generation of Shakira’s genealogical line.
In general, cheetah females in the Mara Ecosystem live longer than males: maximum documented age for males was 11 years while for females – 13 years. Saba – Shakira’s daughter, died in 2014 at the age of 10. Amani, Shakira’s granddaughter, was spotted in the end of January 2021, when she was 12, and Shakira’s daughter Rani was 13. To date, Amani is the most successful cheetah female recorded in the Mara – she had raised to independence 9 cubs in 4 litters: 3 males and 6 females! Amani’s daughter Kusaru has already raised 3 cubs, and one of her granddaughters is nursing her first litter. Amani’s great-granddaughter Sila also raised 3 of her own cubs and even one adopted son of her mother Selenkei, who had joined Sila’s family after separation from Selenkei.