March 3, 2025
On this day, we celebrate an important event – the replenishment of the cheetah population with four young promising cheetahs. Nashipae raised 4 cubs, and today they have begun a completely independent life. And on this day, we salute the dedicated rangers of the Mara Cheetah Unit, who have done and continue the hard work of monitoring and protecting cheetahs. We are also grateful to all the guides and guests of the Mara who helped the rangers in searching for lost cheetahs, monitoring them, and who are working with us so that tomorrow the cheetahs in the Mara not only survive, but also thrive.
Females stay with their adolescent offspring as long as it is beneficial for each family member. Typically, it is the female who leaves her litter. For example, if a female becomes pregnant, she will leave her sub-adult cubs a month before giving birth. But there are exceptions – when the cubs themselves leave their mother. This happened to Nashipae in 2016, when she, her sister Neema and their brother left their mother Rani. And now the same thing has happened to Nashipae herself. On the evening of March 1, the whole family was together, but the female was resting at some distance from the cubs. Yesterday morning, Nashipae was calling her cubs, who were remain hidden in the tall grass without revealing their presence. In the evening, when the female had already walked away by 7 km, the cubs began to move and successfully hunted at 18:10 adult Thomson gazelle and ate well in the tall grass, where other predators would not easily find them.
After the injury (on December 31), Nashipae remained able to hunt, but after each chase she limps heavily for 2-3 days. For herself, she can hunt once every 3 days and then rest in a safe place until the next hunt, while four big cubs need food every day, and the mother is not capable of providing it. Moreover, the female has become a competitor for food. In this case, it is more profitable for young littermates to stick together and hunt whenever possible. Soon, the most successful hunters will begin to separate from the group to avoid food competition. It will be very interesting to watch the process of growing up of the cubs and their new steps in life, which is not easy in the wild.
From that point on, each juvenile was assigned an individual ID number in our Mara Cheetah Database, and the Mara Cheetah Unit gave each of them names in Maa. Cub male C1M (M165) received his name Tipayo in honor of Tipayo Mpoke Oloisuya, who was at the origins of the Mara Cheetah Unit and worked selflessly for the prosperity of the Mara wildlife: first with the rhinoceroses, and since the formation of the Mara Cheetah Unit – with cheetahs. Female C2F (F110) was named Nasieku, which means “Always Comes First/Sharp One”; F3F (F111) was named Nempiris (Grace), and C4F (F112) was named Naimutie (Last Born/Patience).
