12/04/2022
Today is International Cheetah Day. Thousands of tourists come to the Mara hoping to take a picture of their dreams: a cheetah running towards the viewer after an antelope, a female with cubs (playing or walking along the road towards the viewer), family photos on a termite hill etc. Cheetahs are beautiful and favorite models for beginners and professional photographers. For a person, posing for the best shot is no easy job. However, after a hard day at work, the “model” goes home, where she will have a nice dinner and rest to recuperate. In the wild, the food and rest of the “model” is not guaranteed, but critical to survival.
Unlike conservancies, where there are mainly 2 safaris (morning and evening), in the Reserve tourists are active full daylight hours, and animals need to find time and opportunity to hunt, eat and rest without disturbance. Moreover, daytime sleep is vital for a cheetah, especially for a female with cubs, in order to be vigilant at night when other predators are active. Fatigue and lack of sleep can cost cheetahs their lives.
A cheetah in its natural habitat has many tasks: finding prey, mates, safe places to eat prey, resting and raising offspring. Among predators, the cheetah is the most vulnerable, and many animals often affect its well-being. For example, elephants, buffaloes, zebras, ostriches, warthogs, jackals, and baboons often drive cheetahs away from their resting places and prey. And hyenas, lions and less often leopards, in addition, kill cheetahs. Therefore, it is not easy for a cheetah to survive in nature.
By observing cheetahs in the Mara ecosystem, where tourism is active year-round, we found that in order to be successful here, cheetahs must be tolerant of the presence of tourist cars. Cheetahs, tolerant to the vehicles are able to rest properly, hunt productively, reproduce and raise offspring successfully. Cheetahs from outside Mara (from the unprotected lands and from the Serengeti) are more shy and show increased anxiety when cars appear. However, for the cheetahs to succeed, we all need to help them. When you arrive in the Mara and meet a cheetah, remember that there are only 7,000 of them left on the entire African continent, and that you may have met the oldest female with her last litter, or perhaps a young and inexperienced male who has yet to contribute to the population of the ecosystem. And each individual is very important for the entire species! It’s not hard to help a cheetah live and thrive: just help the rangers and follow these rules:
- Do not make a circle around the cheetah, it needs to check environment for a potential danger;
- Turn off the engine and radio when stopped to observe cheetahs: remember that animals are more sensitive and noise makes it difficult to detect the danger;
- Do not make any noise, accelerate or start/stop an engine to attract animal’s attention;
- Do not use flash/external light/headlights while photographing/filming animals, it can affect their vision and often attacks other predators (mostly hyenas);
- Do not separate cubs from the mother by driving. If you hear group members (mother/cub/coalition-mates etc.) calling being separated, stop driving and switch off the engine and radio. Noise confuses animals and prevents finding each other if lost;
- Do not drive whenever cheetahs are hunting;
- Animals have a right of way and right to eat. Please do not block walking cheetah and do not approach it before it has started eating after successful hunt;
- Keep a distance from the cheetah (with cubs or without) of 25 meters, and under no circumstances do not approach cats moving towards your car, as it may encourage them climbing a vehicle.
- Please remember, that drones and remote recording devices are prohibited in the Mara.
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