Wild Inside the National Zoo Cheetah Coalition
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AnimalsTranscript
00:00 Here at the National Zoo, we have a cheetah coalition of two 10-year-old males, Granger
00:07 and Zabini.
00:08 They are brothers and they've been together their whole lives.
00:12 Gat is our three-year-old male cheetah.
00:14 He was separated from his sister a year ago.
00:17 So we are now looking to pair him with another male.
00:21 I would love to see Gat have the kind of bond that Granger and Zabini have and form a coalition
00:26 with another cheetah.
00:27 A
00:51 cheetah coalition is a group of male cheetahs.
00:54 Their social structure is a lot different than the other cats.
00:56 So instead of seeing large family groups, we have groups of males.
01:01 Having a coalition allows you to hold down a territory.
01:04 They have the companionship.
01:06 They're more comfortable.
01:07 They feel safer.
01:08 They would rely on those other males for protection.
01:10 We want to replicate the way the cheetahs would live in the wild.
01:13 Granger and Zabini are full brothers, so they have an incredible strong bond.
01:20 They work together as a team.
01:22 That behavior is still there, that instinct.
01:25 Typically brothers will stay together their whole lives, but we often see unrelated males
01:29 looking for that same companionship.
01:32 Gat was hand-raised here with his sister, Carmelita.
01:34 Their mother gave birth to Gat naturally and then had to have a C-section after that, so
01:38 she was unable to take care of the cubs.
01:41 Gat was separated from Melita when they were two years old.
01:43 In the wild, that's when the female would leave her brothers and live independently
01:47 from them.
01:48 He gives up a little easier.
01:49 You ready, Gat?
01:50 So after Melita left, Gat seemed very eager to spend time with us all the time.
01:58 He's just kind of a goofy guy, and he always wants attention from us, but we really would
02:05 prefer that he have a relationship with another cheetah.
02:09 We're trying to pair Gat up with Bakari, who's 22 months old and who was born at our facility
02:15 in Front Royal, Virginia.
02:16 Bakari was raised by his mother, so his behavior is more typical of what we would expect from
02:21 a cheetah.
02:22 Bakari also was just separated from his sisters, so this would be a good time to be able to
02:26 pair them up.
02:27 It's a long process.
02:28 We can't just expect them to get along.
02:30 Okay, Bakari.
02:31 They are wild animals, and they're going to look at another cheetah as potentially a threat,
02:38 a competitor, before they're going to look at it as a companion.
02:41 So we have to give them lots of time to get to know each other.
02:43 We give them lots of time to see each other through the fence, so they can start to form
02:48 a relationship without actually having physical contact with each other.
02:52 Yeah, so yard one is ready to go?
02:53 Yard one is ready to go.
02:55 Come on, Bakari.
02:57 What we're about to do now is we're getting ready to introduce Gat and Bakari out into
03:01 the exhibit for the very first time through protected contact, so there's going to be
03:04 a fence that separates the two.
03:06 We are going to put Bakari out first, because he's still a little shy about going out into
03:10 the yards.
03:11 He needs to carefully inspect and kind of creep out just to make sure that he's going
03:16 to be safe.
03:17 We're going to follow that up with releasing Gat out into the exhibit next to him.
03:23 Okay, come on, Gat.
03:26 There's a fence there, so they can.
03:37 The good thing is Bakari, who's the younger of the two, he's standing his ground, so he's
03:40 not really showing any fear of Gat.
03:43 So it's really good.
03:44 He's defending himself.
03:45 That'll be really important when we actually physically put him in the same yard.
03:51 Cheetahs, when they're around someone that's bigger, they can often feel intimidated, so
03:54 they'll put on a show of acting like they're very tough and they're very capable of defending
03:58 themselves.
03:59 So that's often what you see from Bakari.
04:00 We would like to be able to form a coalition because both of them have shown interest in
04:05 companionship.
04:06 We want to look for things like them spending time together.
04:09 Anything where they seem comfortable in close proximity to the other cheetah is going to
04:13 indicate to us that they are ready to take the next step and actually go in the same
04:18 space together.
04:19 That could be a really quick progression or it could take them a long time to get to that
04:23 point.
04:24 And if they choose not to, then that's also up to them.
04:32 Our hope is that Gat and Bakari are going to have a relationship similar to what Granger
04:36 and Zabini have, living side by side, peacefully.
04:40 If it takes years for them to eventually build that relationship where they'll accept each
04:44 other as brothers, time will tell.
04:47 That would be the ideal end of the story.
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