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Anvar Alikhan

"Oh, no," she replied, "Actually we feed them raw donkey meat. But unlike other big cats, cheetahs don’t acquire a taste for blood.When I first came here, one of the cheetahs licked me so hard with its sandpaper tongue that my hand began to bleed. It tasted my blood slowly. I was a little worried that it might bite. But no, it just licked the blood off and continued to play with me, like the big pussycat it was. Lions aren’t like that, for instance. Once they taste blood, there’s always the danger that they’ll attack you.

"Cheetahs are unique for the affinity they have for humans. In fact, sometimes it can become a problem. Like a female cheetah we had here who became so close to us that she refused to mate with a male cheetah. You see, she actually thought she was a human herself!"

Then suddenly, as we played with them, the cheetahs froze. They extricated themselves from us and, one by one, turned their gaze intently towards a point at the end of the perimeter. Then, in unison, they all began to lope, very slowly, towards the wire-mesh fence.I looked to see what had caught their attention so suddenly. It was two little blonde children on the other side of the fence, aged perhaps two and four. One was in the arms of its mother, and the other was holding onto her skirt as they walked past the enclosure. The pack of cheetahs stalked them, in a chillingly businesslike manner, down the entire length of the fence, with only that inch-and-a-half of wire mesh separating them from their objects of desire. Then, when they finally came to the end of perimeter, the cheetahs stopped, and stared longingly until the children disappeared completely from sight.

I cocked an inquisitive eyebrow at Nadia.

"Oh, you see, they get a little excited when they see children," she explained hastily. "Any small creature is immediately categorised in their brains as ‘prey’. They can’t help it. It’s thousands of years of evolutionary programming. But apart from that they are like pussycats. Really."

I learned a number of interesting things about cheetahs from Nadia that morning. Like the fact that not only can they run at 75 mph , but they can accelerate to their top speed within three seconds flat. That they’re the only animals whose spines flex in both directions (which is the secret behind their incredible speed and grace when running). And that because of their innate friendliness, they have been kept as pets by everybody from Cleopatra to various Indian maharajas.

But, most of all, I learned from that small, sinister interaction between the cheetahs and the children, that no matter how friendly and domesticated they may seem, they can never completely escape their hunting imperative. In other words, a cheetah can never really change its spots.

Sketches by Dominic Xavier.

For more information on cheetah farms check out either of these web sites:

Otjitotongwe Lodge and Cheetah Guest Farm
Harnas Lion, Leopard and Cheetah Farm

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