Hand-raised cheetah cubs doing well at San Diego Zoo Safari Park

Two cheetah sisters born at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park to a mother who refused to take care of them are being hand raised by keepers.

The cubs are doing well, zoo spokeswoman Jenny Mehlow said Wednesday. “They’re growing and hitting milestones in terms of their development,” she said.

It’s not known why the mother turned her back on the newborns, which were born Nov. 19, but it’s not a rare occurrence, Mehlow said. When it happened, she said, zoo keepers were ready with a milk formula designed for cheetahs. Keepers also have been simulating the grooming the cubs would have received from their mother.

At four weeks old, the cheetahs will begin receiving solid food, and at 70 days will be weaned from the milk formula. Cheetahs, the world’s fastest land animal, typically have a life span of 17 years in a zoo (and about 12 years in the wild).

Through this month, visitors to the Safari Park near Escondido can see the newborns at the Animal Care Center nursery, but there’s not likely to be much action. At this stage in their lives, they sleep about 22 hours a day. The lights usually are turned off in the nursery to imitate a dark den.

The keepers call one cub “Yellow” and the other “Purple” based on the colors of ID tags on their tails. Once it’s determined where the cheetahs will live, they will be given names.

Cheetahs in the wild — parts of Africa and Iran — are considered threatened. Their numbers have fallen from about 100,000 in 1900 to 10,000 today. About 10 percent of the cheetahs live in zoos or wildlife parks.

The San Diego Zoo received its first cheetah, Bong, in 1933. Unsuccessful at captive breeding, officials brought 10 wild-caught cheetahs from South Africa to the Safari Park in 1970 to form a core population. Two 5-acre enclosures were built, and soon the park had its first cub, a male named Juba. Since then, almost 160 additional births have occurred there.

The Safari Park is one of nine facilities in the national Breeding Coalition Center, which hopes to create a “sustainable population” of cheetahs within the next decade and prevent the animal from going extinct.