A five-month-old cheetah cub died at Madhya Pradesh’s Kuno National Park on Monday, PTI reported, quoting unidentified wildlife officials.
The cub was born to a cheetah named Gamini, who was among those translocated from South Africa and Namibia to Kuno. Gamini had given birth to six cubs in March. In June, her first cub died.
Since 2023, seven of the 20 cheetahs brought from Africa and their five cubs born in India have died in Kuno National Park. There are now 13 adult cheetahs and 12 cubs in the national park.
During a routine monitoring on July 29, the five-month-old cub who died was unable to lift the hind portion of its body.
“On further observation, the cub was seen dragging the entire hind portion of its body,” an unidentified wildlife official told PTI. “It was immediately rescued and brought to the hospital. There, it was found that the cub’s vertebral column was fractured.”
On Monday morning, the cub’s health suddenly worsened, eventually leading to its death. This was after the cub was given emergency treatment, PTI reported.
“We must wait for Kuno officials to ascertain how the cub sustained the injury,” Subharanjan Sen, the acting principal chief conservator of forests (wildlife), told The Indian Express. “We have heard that the cub probably sustained the injury while playing with its siblings.”
In September 2022, the cheetahs were reintroduced to India seven decades after the species was declared extinct in the country.
The cheetah was officially declared extinct by the Indian government in 1952. Before that, the wild cats were last recorded in the country in 1948, when three cheetahs were shot in the Sal forests in Chhattisgarh’s Koriya District.