BHOPAL: Four cubs whose birth in the jungles of Madhya Pradesh’s Kuno National Park (KNP) had marked a historical milestone in India’s cheetah conservation journey on April 11 were all found dead in the jungles a month later—perhaps due to predation by another animal.
The four cubs were found dead by the monitoring team near the den site in Sheopur Territorial Division (outside the KNP territory) at 6.30 am on Tuesday. The cubs were last seen alive on Monday evening.
“With the carcasses being partially eaten, the deaths seemed to have been caused due to the predation by another animal,” Project Cheetah Director Uttam Kumar Sharma said in an official statement.
While the mother cheetah has been found to be safe and healthy, a necropsy and associated detailed investigation of the four cubs’ partially eaten bodies will render more clarity to the development.
“Though the necropsy and other associated forensic investigations are yet to be conducted, still the circumstantial evidence—partially eaten bodies of the cubs—strongly suggests that they (four cubs) were attacked, killed and partially eaten by another animal, possibly a leopard.
Till the cubs become four to five months old, they are even vulnerable to attack by non-feline predators, like hyenas, which is why the survival rate of cheetah cubs in the wild is as low as 5-10%. Even the mother cheetah is often unable to protect the cubs from other predators,” a forest department official associated with Project Cheetah told this newspaper.
The tragic development happened less than 24 hours after CM Dr Mohan Yadav had released two Botswana female cheetahs into the wilderness of KNP on Monday morning. Following their release, the two Botswana cheetahs had joined 15 Namibian and South African cheetahs and their India-born cubs in the KNP jungles.
Nine cheetahs from Botswana, including six females, had been translocated to KNP on February 28. After the deaths, the KNP now houses 50 adult and semi-adult cheetahs and their cubs.