The Zulus from southern Africa have an old story about the Cheetah. Legend has it that a hunter was once greatly impressed when he saw a female cheetah chase down and kill an antelope. He watched as the cheetah later called out and three little cubs came running to her from the bushes. The hunter wondered if he could train these cubs to hunt for him, so when the tired mother left her cubs to go and drink some water, the hunter snuck in, picked up all three cubs and ran back to his village. When the mother cheetah couldn’t find her cubs after she returned to her kill, she was devastated. She cried all day and all night. She cried so much that the trails of the tears she cried left dark marks on her cheeks. That's how the cheetah is said to have got those distinctive black marks on its face.
If Dr Dolittle were alive today and spoke to them about their condition, I’m sure the cheetahs would break down into tears again. They’d weep to him about how human beings have encroached on their homes and destroyed their hunting grounds and about how they’re still poached and hunted for their skins. I saw this shocking map on Wikipedia yesterday that compared the historic ranges of the different cheetah subspecies with their present ranges. Cheetahs once used to run free all over Africa, while the Asiatic cheetah used to speed after deer from Arabia in the west to Bangladesh in the east. Unfortunately, today they are confined only to a few scattered patches in Africa and Iran. They’ve been wiped out everywhere else.
However, It is not all over for our spotted friends yet. Lots of people around the world are working hard to ensure that future generations of cheetahs don’t just continue to survive, but thrive.
What I’m most excited about is the reintroduction of cheetahs to India. A few days ago, 8 cheetahs from Namibia arrived in India, and if all goes well, they will be released into the wild. Cheetahs will once again zoom through our Indian forests and remind the spotted deer why they have their speed!
If you’re still feeling sorry for the mother cheetah in the first paragraph, then don’t. I only told you half the story! An old man from the Zulu village later saw the cheetah and asked her why she was crying. When the cheetah told him that her children were missing, the old man remembered seeing the hunter with 3 cubs in his village. Realizing what had happened, the old man angrily stormed back to the village and told everyone what the hunter had done. The furious elders then drove the hunter out of there because he had disgraced their tribe. The mother cheetah was delighted when her cubs returned to her after being away for a few days, just like I’m sure all of us are that cheetahs have returned to India after an absence of 7 decades.
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