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Marlice Van Der Merwe is a Namibian conservationist who really knows how to stick her neck out for her job. This video footage at the link shows her wandering through a Cheetah filled field with nothing but a motor bike and a stick as the wild animals hiss and growl at her. Link
The Smithsonian National Zoological Park has installed a streaming webcam in a cheetah’s den, so that we can keep an eye on a mother cheetah and two cubs.
Female cheetah Zazi is raising a cub she gave birth to and another mother’s cub, both born in December 2010. Cheetahs that give birth to only one cub, called a singleton, cannot produce enough milk to keep the cub alive. The cub born to Amani, a first-time mother, was hand-raised for 13 days before being placed with Zazi, creating a litter of two that will likely help stimulate milk production from Zazi. These cheetahs are at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute (SCBI) in Front Royal, Virginia.
Link to webcam.
If you don’t see any action on the webcam, there is a gallery of baby cheetah pictures. Link -via KTAR
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Usain Bolt, who holds the world record for both the 100- and 200-meter sprint, adopted a cheetah named Lightning Bolt, but he isn’t going to make the cheetah into a house cat. Bolt paid $13,700 for adoption rights, and has pledged $3,000 a year for the cat’s upkeep at a wildlife center in Nairobi. The money helps to support the Kenyan Wildlife Services and their efforts to protect endangered species.
The world record holder appeared more comfortable later while handling his baby cheetah, which was the size of a fully grown domestic cat. He cradled the fuzzy-headed cub while feeding it bottled milk as cameramen snapped away.
When asked if he was afraid of cheetahs, Bolt said: “Yes, I was, but not anymore.”
Lighting Bolt is among three cubs rescued by KWS officials after their mother abandoned them in a game park.
(image credit: AP/Karel Prinsloo)
Sangbae Kim, a robot designer from MIT, is probably best known to Neatorama readers as the inventor of the Stickybot, a robot that can climb walls with feet modeled after a gecko’s sticky feet. He also used the idea of scuttling cockroaches for a robot called the iSprawl.
Kim’s latest project is a robot inspired by the cheetah. The idea is build a prototype robot from a lightweight carbon-fiber-foam composite that can run at the cheetah’s speed of 70 miles per hour.
It’s an ambitious project. Current wheeled robots are efficient, but can be slow in rough terrains. For instance, iRobot’s PackBot, which is used by the U.S. military, can only travel at speeds of up to 5.8 miles per hour.
“Most wheeled robots today can do very well on flat surfaces, but they are slow,” says Kim. That’s why he’s looking to the cheetah for ideas. The cheetah has an extremely flexible backbone that gives extra speed or force to its running motion.
The project is expected to take about 18 months. Link
Sarah, a cheetah at the Cincinnati Zoo, set a world record for the 100 meter dash today by covering the distance in 6.13 seconds. The event was held at Mast Farm, the zoo’s cheetah breeding facility. The race is a remote contest between Sarah and Zaza, a cheetah at Cheetah Outreach in South Africa. Zaza is expected to run her race later this month. To compare, the human world record is 9.58 seconds, held by Usain Bolt. Link to story. Link to Sarah’s blog. -via Metafilter
Andew Chase is a photographer who creates mechanical sculptures of animals and photographs them in different poses. This cheetah is his latest creation in preparation for his photo book Trionic Morphatractable Engineer.
A motion capture film of the cheetah
Via io9 (which has pictures of some of his best works)
If you think having to "share" your bed with your pet cat is bad, that’s nothing compared to what Riana Van Nieuwenhuizen has to do: the sanctuary worker shares her South African home with really, really big cats: four cheetahs, five lions, and two tigers!
Riana bought her first cheetah, Fiela in 2006, after realising the big cats were in trouble and heading for extinction with only 1000 left in Africa.
She left her full time job working for the department of justice – a position she had held for 22 years – and found temporary employment on a game ranch where she could raise her beloved big cat. [...]
The cats in Riana’s own home are truly part of the family and are allowed to roam freely.
Imagine the size of their litterbox! Amy Oliver of the Daily Mail has more: Link (Photo: John Lienbenberg/Barcroft Media)
(image credit: Farid Belbachir/ZSL/OPNA)
From the Upcoming 
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