One more cheetah, this time a cub, has died at the Kuno National Park (KNP) in Madhya Pradesh, wildlife authorities said on Tuesday. The two-month-old cub was one of four born to the cheetah, Jwala, who was among the set of eight animals imported from Namibia. The likely cause of death, officials said, was “from weakness”, with a press note from the Centre stating that the two-month old cub was the “smallest and weakest of the litter.”
Literature and experience from Africa suggests that cheetah cubs, in the wild, have a survival rate of 10%, and roughly the same fraction make it to adulthood, the government’s press release noted.
This is the fourth cheetah to have died in India since 20 of the animals were relocated from Namibia and South Africa respectively to KNP, in an experiment at establishing a community of cheetahs, the only large cat to have gone extinct from India.
