Roaming a new home
Published 9:00 pm Friday, June 1, 2007
WASHINGTON – You won’t find any warts on Draco, Granger and Zabini, and they don’t wield wands.
And unlike the characters in the Harry Potter books they’re named after, they’re brothers on the prowl for some fun in their new home.
The Smithsonian National Zoological Park introduced the trio of 2-year-old cheetahs to the public Friday, a month after their arrival from a conservation center in Florida.
The addition doubled the zoo’s cheetah population.
After being coaxed from their cages Thursday, one of the cheetahs darted back and forth nervously amid clicking shutters and camera flashes.
“The exhibit is very new for them,” said assistant curator Tony Barthel, 36.
He said the animals would eventually settle into their new habitat, lounging about like the zoo’s three other cheetahs – two females and a male.
While the cheetahs’ parents were born in Namibia, in Southern Africa, the cubs are part of a captive-breeding program and were born at the White Oak Conservation Center in Yulee, Fla.
Barthel said it’s too soon to say when the brothers will be bred or with which females, but he’s excited about the cheetahs because of their symbolism. The cubs, who don’t look anything like babies, offer a new genetic line for captive breeding. Because of small populations in captivity, zoos have to work hard for genetic variation within groups to prevent mutations and birth defects.
The Cheetah Species Survival Plan manages breeding and conservation programs in North America and helped procure the cheetahs for the zoo.
Cheetahs once had thriving populations in Asia, the Middle East and Africa, but now they live in the wild mainly in Africa, with smaller populations in Iran and Afghanistan. Cheetahs have been on the endangered species list since 1970.
The National Zoo had its first of two cheetah litters in November 2004. While the mothers remain in Washington, both litters have left.
The first litter, born to Tumai, was two female and two male cubs. The females went to the Cape May Zoo in Cape May, N.J., while the two males ended up at the Milwaukee County Zoo in Milwaukee, Wis. The second female cheetah, Zazi, had her litter in April 2005. The two female cubs ended up at Disney’s Wild Animal Kingdom in Florida, and the three male cubs went to Lowry Park Zoo in Tampa, Fla.
The new arrivals and the zoo’s original cheetahs are being held in adjacent enclosures but will soon have a new habitat to roam.
Barthel said fall will herald the opening of the Cheetah Science Facility at the zoo’s Conservation and Research Center in Front Royal, Va. The facility has been planned for some time, but the zoo “just broke ground last week,” he said.
