Word: cheetahs
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...heartbreaking to watch Walls and her three siblings try. When her father takes her to the zoo, he has her reach into the cheetah's cage to pet it. One year, with no money for Christmas presents, he has her just pick out a star in the night sky: "We laughed about all the kids who ... got nothing for Christmas but a bunch of cheap plastic toys...
...cats, by nature, are territorial, live in low densities and hunt their prey over vast stretches of land (a tiger in the Russian Far East roams over 400 sq. mi., and a cheetah in Namibia will traverse 600 sq. mi.). A wildlife reserve has to be huge to support such animals, and even large parks can contain just so many of the fiercely territorial creatures. Big cats that roam or live outside reserves increasingly find themselves on turf staked out by farmers, herders and loggers, especially in parts of Africa and Asia where the human population is booming. Wild prey...
Namibia has 3,000 cheetahs--the single largest remaining population in Africa--but ranchers shoot them for attacking cattle. Laurie Marker of the Cheetah Conservation Fund has been importing Anatolian shepherds, 160-lb. dogs bred in Turkey to protect livestock from wolves. She trains the Anatolians and then gives them to ranches, where they will stand their ground against the much smaller cheetah. Problem cheetahs that kill cattle are sometimes captured and fed an alternating diet of wild game and beef laced with lithium chloride. The beef sickens the cheetahs, persuading them to stick to wild meat...
Working with Behzad Rahgoshai, deputy project manager of Iran's Conservation of Asiatic Cheetah Project, they have discovered that although some cheetahs are shot, the main reason for the animals' decline is that their favorite foods are disappearing from the landscape. Both the goitered and jeeber gazelles have been virtually wiped out by nomadic hunters. Cheetahs have been forced to survive on urial and ibex--mountain sheep and mountain goats--which are impossible to chase on steep, stony slopes. "Cheetahs have to wait for them to come down to the foothills in search of water holes," says Hunter. "It means...
...More Monkey Business Your item "cheetah, you ought to be Out of Pictures" [Oct. 13] on primatologist Jane Goodall's efforts to stop the use of actor-chimpanzees on TV and in movies, came at the perfect time. With the news of a tiger that was kept in a New York City apartment and the mauling of Las Vegas showman Roy Horn by a white tiger during a performance, people are finally understanding that wild animals belong in their natural environment. People lucky enough to travel to Africa can see these beautiful animals in their own territory. The only thing...