Baby Cheetahs The Story Continues The Lion Whisperer

Not far from just where little cheetah cubs are and we're just gonna see how the little critters are doing and get a bit of an update on them before they come to us. They're going to stay here a few days. Just going to make sure that they are good before coming to the sanctuary. Guys, I don't know about you but those are probably five of the most cutest little animals that I've ever laid eyes on. It's so incredible considering what they've been through. I mean with their mother a few days back and now at the vet and I was just saying to my colleague to me they are not exhibiting the signs of cheetah of that age that have come from the wild. They just seem too calm. Normally big cats like that of that age would be hissing and spitting and flying at the fence but yeah these five are really calm and I can't help but think that because of this five of them it helps the situation. It really helps the situation immensely having each other to comfort each other basically. So yeah it's incredible and it's going to be a long long journey ahead. The goal is not to have these five animals spend their lives in captivity. I wouldn't be taking on this commitment if I thought that that was the end goal. The real trick is to not become too attached but over the years I have learned to harden up in the sense that in the back of your mind there's always this voice saying these are going to go back to the wild and that's actually the crux of the story and it's going to be such a rewarding time when that when that day does come. So yeah really happy to see them doing so well considering the pretty crappy start to life that they've been given. They certainly didn't deserve this and as I said before I mean their mother just brutally murdered through no So this is going to be an interesting story. So we are into week two of raising these five cheetah cubs that arrived a couple of weeks back. We had them for a few days and then as a precaution took them to Dr Caldwell to just make sure that they had the 24-hour care that they needed. Cheetah can go downhill very very quickly so our team is extremely vigilant and if we notice anything out of the norm, especially at this young vulnerable age, we act on it quickly. Anyway they've been back one week and they are thriving They're going to lick the little critters out Do you think they are eager to get out of there? That is hysterical. They are starting to develop their little personalities. It's quite an interesting approach that we've had to take obviously to make sure that these cubs grow up as wild as possible. There is obviously going to be some human imprinting because they are associating humans with their food and everything else that they get but there are strict rules. We don't interact with them unnecessarily. It's literally give them their food and then make sure that they eat and then leave them alone. Already in one week I've noticed the little behaviors coming out. There's one in particular that's pretty cheeky, pretty confident and pretty hissy so it's really cool to be a part of this journey. Cutie puties, really five strong, fit, healthy looking cheetah cubs. Look at that little mane on their backs, they look like little honey badgers. It's a mechanism of mimicry where they mimic the honey badger and most of the animals out there know how ferocious a honey badger is and how formidable they can be. So it is a mechanism to give them a fighting chance against would-be predators that would just otherwise kill them. So a predator would come along and see these little honey badger looking animals and then think twice. Okay and as mentioned guys the trick with these little guys is obviously to not have them habituated to humans so the trick is to really just be a fly on the wall when it comes to filming them and I suppose I'll be the voice behind the camera just giving a little bit of a detailed kind of take on what's going down. It's nice and warm in the sun, it is going into winter here so it's a bit chilly at night and in the morning but these guys are enjoying it and they're just going to explore and run and you know kind of expend the energy so that they can go and sleep, grow, wake up, eat, sleep, wake up, play, repeat and this process goes on for more or less two years until they can be released back into the wild. So I'm trying to document them on a weekly basis just so we can see this growth and the development occur over the period of two years and yes you've heard me correctly it's a two-year rewilding process. Today I'm also going to be looking at the area of 150 odd hectares maybe a little bit bigger of where they're eventually going to go to be rewilded. It's going tag on to this camp that they join so to give you a context to put you in the picture they are at the moment in a smaller holding camp with a what we call a night room or a room nursery where they could be locked up at night with infrared lights. It's winter here now so it is pretty cold and so they've got two nice warm infrared lights with hay and then it opens up onto a slightly bigger holding camp where they can get outdoors and run and play and get some vitamin D and chew on some grass and get used to the natural habitat that they are going to be living in and then from there they're going to go into a one and a half hectare area. It's quite thick and it gives them some privacy so that should be good in terms of the whole process and then it's going to open up onto this magnificent 150 odd hectare area. Okay we'll just leave them we'll leave them be let them settle and then we'll just pick it up and be that fly on the wall for the next several years of their life.