BHOPAL: It was not quintuplets, but instead sextuplets which were born to South African cheetah Gamini at Madhya Pradesh’s Kuno National Park (KNP) recently.
On March 10, the Kuno National Park (KNP) reported that Gamini had given birth to five cubs. Eight days later on Monday, the park in MP’s Sheopur district reported that Gamini had actually delivered six cubs.
Sharing the video of the six cubs on the social media platform X on Monday morning, Union minister for environment, forest and climate change Bhupender Yadav wrote, “There is no end to joy: It is not five, but six cubs! A week after the news of five cubs born to Gamini, it is now confirmed that Gamini, the South African cheetah mother, has given birth to six cubs, a record of sorts for a first-time mother. Sharing the joy with visuals of Gamini’s adorable six cubs…”
With this development, the KNP is now home to 27 cheetahs, including 13 adults from Namibia and South Africa and 14 cubs, the eldest of the cubs being a 11-month-old female born in March 2023.
Since the reintroduction of the fastest moving mammal in India, this is the fourth cheetah litter born on Indian soil (KNP). After the birth of the first litter of four cubs on March 27, 2023 at KNP, three more litters of triplets, quadruplets and quintuplets have been born in less than three months.
While three of the four litters so far were born to two Namibian cheetahs Aasha and Jwala, this is the first time that a South African cheetah has given birth to cubs at the KNP.
The first cheetah litter of quadruplets was reported at the KNP enclosure on March 27, 2023, when Namibian cheetah Siyaya aka Jwala gave birth to quadruplets at her enclosure at the KNP. However, just one of those new born cubs, a female cub could actually survive and is presently aged 11 months at the KNP.
Nine months later on January 3, 2024, the KNP management shared the news of birth of triplets to another Namibian cheetah Aasha, while 20 days later, the park reported about the birth of quadruplets to Siyaya aka Jwala again.
As part of the project to reintroduce cheetahs in the Indian wild (from where it became extinct due to rampant poaching over seven decades ago), eight of them (five females and three males) were flown from Namibia to the KNP and released at the park by PM Narendra Modi on his 72nd birthday on September 17, 2022.
Five months later, 12 more cheetahs – this time from South Africa – were translocated to the KNP in February 2023. Since then, seven adults and semi-adults and three cubs have died at the park.
