… found that the companionship with this Lab has not only helped it calm down, but thrive.
CHEETAHS AND DOGS WEREN’T ALWAYS friends. And at first glance, the feline-and-canine couple seems an odd pairing—one that turns heads for its cuteness, if not its unconventionality.
But the practice of rearing young cheetahs with a canine companion has become a major means of relaxing the notoriously nervous cats at U.S. zoos from New York to San Diego.
The relationship didn’t begin there, however. Nor, for that matter, did it start on an African wildlife reserve. Captive cheetahs and dogs first became friends in a small town in Oregon.
In 1976, research scientist and conservation biologist Laurie Marker was living in Winston, a town of about 3,000 people. As the curator of a cheetah-breeding program at Wildlife Safari, she found herself hand-rearing a lonely cheetah cub named Khayam.
Cheetahs are companionable litter-mates, but Marker had no other cats to put with Khayam. So she decided to try pairing the fastest land mammal on the planet with the animal typically thought of as a human’s best friend.
And it worked: Khayam and a Lab-mix named Shesho became fast friends.
Raising Khayam with a dog “provided friendship, security, and [helped keep the cheetah] calm,” Marker says in an email. “Companion dogs act as a surrogate for cheetah siblings … It is the friendship between the two individuals that creates a strong bond, and this is what makes for a successful pairing.”
In other words, it chills the cheetah out. Now, when a cub that’s abandoned or orphaned ends up in human care, many zoos pair the cat with a dog as a substitute sibling.
“When I provided the San Diego Zoo with a cheetah named Arusha five years later, I recommended placing a puppy with him,” Marker says. “They did, and the publicity around the cheetah-dog duo made the popularity of companion animals soar.”
There’s no doubt that cheetahs lead stressful lives. Hunted to extinction in India, Israel, and Egypt, there are now fewer than 7,000 of them left worldwide. That’s a drop of more than 90 percent since 1900. And in the wild, only 5 percent of cheetah cubs make it to adulthood, due to lurking lions, hyenas, and poachers, plus the constant threat of not getting another meal.
“The cheetah would rather flee than fight,” says Suzi Rapp, vice president of animal programs at the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium, which has 16 cheetahs and four companion dogs. “Even though the cheetah has this [incredible] speed, there are predators that are bigger and badder than they are.”
All of which makes the animals nervous, even in captivity.
Dogs, on the other hand, are often mellow. Thousands of years of instinct have been subdued and replaced by thousands of years of domestication. From the historical use of hunting dogs and sled dogs to today’s show dogs and Internet dogs, canines occupy a special place in the human heart. We’ve also taught them to provide furry, drooling therapy for everyone from babies to college students to, evidently, Africa’s rarest big cat.
Captive cheetahs form singular bonds with their companion dogs, which are usually easygoing breeds eager to make new friends. But cheetahs are as fickle as they are fast. “I can always introduce an older dog to a new cheetah, but I can’t introduce an old cheetah to a new dog,” says Rapp.
[…]
The relationship, an adorable example of mutualism, has captivated zoo visitors and clearly benefited the jumpy felines. The cheetahs get a sense of security, and the dogs get a new best friend.
“[Cheetahs are] extremely high-stress animals,” says Roy. “Dogs are everyone’s best friend. Cheetahs soak that in.” So much so, she says, that some are called “the dog of the cat family.”
I’ve seen this in action at the San Diego zoo. We were walking down one of the paths just as the zoo was opening one morning and and walking toward us was two Cheetahs and their companion labs on leashes with their handlers. It was beautiful.
Special Indictment Day Soother Special:
Oyez, Oyez!!!