A day in the life of "Kisaru" a superb Cheetah mum to six 4 month old cubs. - Lemek Conservancy/Mara, Kenya.

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marc

marc

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"Kisaru's" 6 x 4 mth old cubs, 4 F, 2 M.
Anyone who's tried to capture multiple young ALL together AND looking vaguely your way is never easy! 😲

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Kisaru does her best Tai Chi stretches after a nap.
Time to think about lunch. ;)

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Final tap
Kisaru ankle taps an Impala and successfully brings her down, with 6 (4 mth old) hungry cubs to feed, she needs to hunt just about every day!

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Need a hand mum?
The heavens have opened up and after a scuffle whereby she briefly escaped some of her 6 have now offered to lend a helping hand.

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Seize the day.
Still in pouring rain, and after commencing feeding on her pregnant Impala she abandons it when she spies and takes down an (also pregnant) Thompsons Gazelle, what an afternoon!
She's a smart mum, as cheetah will often use the rain to their advantage as it will disguise any sound they make whilst hunting.
Best part about this experience was we had the entire day to ourselves.............pure bliss. :love:

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Cheers
Marc
 
Last edited:
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Wow Marc, another incredible series of photos. Love every one of them! BTW, my response to the first photo was 'so cute, I want to cuddle them' and then I saw the fourth photo and decided to discard that idea :)
 
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Many thanks.

Icarus said:
Love the stretching shot. Do Cheetah's usually have six offspring?? Seems like a huge amount to take care of.
Click to expand...

@Icarus
Six cubs at birth is certainly not an unusual number, but getting 6 to this stage of development is certainly indicative of a special mum, the record for a cheetah mum
in raising all her cubs to maturity is an amazing 8.

Sadly cheetah cubs in the wild have only a 5% chance of making it to maturity (around 2yrs).
This last (NOV/DEC) trip where this sequence was captured I saw many encounters of cheetah mothers with large families such as: 7.........YES 7
wink3.gif
in the Masai Mara, 6 here in Lemek, plus 2 mothers both with 4 cubs each @ Naboisho Conservancy not to mention the famous 5 bros coalition Tano Bora from the Mara, so very blessed indeed!
 
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