Friday, December 10, 2010

Wildlife Conservation in Action - Cheetah - The Fastest Cat Alive Albeit a Slow Breeder

CheetahImage via WikipediaBy Lance Winslow

Yes, the Cheetah is the fastest running animal alive clocking in at 70 miles per hour. No you can't get away, even if you tried, you need a car going down the freeway to get out of dodge if one is chasing you. And these wild cats learn to run at a very early age, even the cubs are fast, agile, and high-energy.

Cheetahs are also very social and make all sorts of sounds, this is their form of communication. They use it when hunting, lounging around, playing, and some of those sounds are mating calls - which evoke biological responses as well.

There was just a terrific article on this in a publication put out by the Zoological Society of San Diego "ZooNooz" in their December 2009 issue titled; "Do You Hear What I Hear: New Breeding Protocol for Cheetahs," by Karyl Carmignani (a staff writer) along with outstanding up close pictures by award winning zoo keeper and photographer Ken Bohn of the San Diego Zoo.

According to his article the zoo keepers keep track of the sounds Cheetahs make, and they know when a male and a female are ready to mate. Indeed, they've now recorded these sounds along with the others. And there are many according to the article; "purr, chirp, growl, snarl, hiss, cough, moan" but it is the chirping which excites the female and "triggers her biological functions to drop eggs" into her female parts and start her reproductive system in full-swing.

This is fascinating, and it's great that the San Diego Zoo can use these sounds and speakers to help this process along so that there are many healthy offspring born at exactly the right time even in captivity. It's amazing the science of zoology is saving endangered species. Perhaps, these techniques can be used to help other animals in the animal kingdom do the same thing?

Wildlife conservation is very important for species which are having a tough go of it in the wild, some due to mankind's encroachment, and/or hunting - and the damage caused to the food chain from human activity. Indeed, I hope you will please consider all this when you think about wildlife conservation.

Lance Winslow is a retired Founder of a Nationwide Franchise Chain, and now runs the Online Think Tank. Lance Winslow believes it's hard work to write 22,000 articles; http://www.bloggingcontent.net/.

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