The Big Cats' Cradle
Far Away From Onlookers' Gaze, Relaxation and Reproduction Are Goals Of Zoo's $1 Million Cheetah Center

By Michael E. Ruane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, October 6, 2007

These days you can find the cheetahs, Zazi and Tumai, yawning in the hilltop shade while butterflies float among the wildflowers and the mountain breezes rustle the trees in the distance.

Gone is the madness of Connecticut Avenue -- the gawking zoogoers, the noise, the pressure.

Here, in the foothills of the Blue Ridge, a lucky cat can stretch her legs, get two squares a day and enjoy the peace and quiet. This mountain spa away from the rat race, and the poor chumps back in the city, is a straight-up cheetah heaven.

Which is precisely what scientists at the National Zoo want.

Today, the zoo is scheduled to unveil its new $1 million Cheetah Science Facility on nine acres spread among the rolling hills of its huge Conservation and Research Center, in Front Royal, Va.

The facility, made up of 14 fenced enclosures that can hold 30 cheetahs, will enable zoo scientists to conduct detailed studies on the animals and help them reproduce.

It is something the zoo's cheetah experts have been dreaming of for 30 years.

"It's fantastic," said Ken Lang, mammal unit manager and a supervisor of the facility. "You wait 30 years, it's pretty damned exciting."

Cheetahs, known for beauty, grace and speed in the wild and said to have been kept as pets by the likes of Charlemagne and Genghis Khan, are a threatened, relatively fragile species.

The legendary carnivores are poor climbers, have weak jaws and can't roar. They are prone to reproductive and digestive problems and can contract an AIDS-like disease, and only about 15,000 survive around the world, mostly in Africa, zoo experts said.

Much remains a mystery.

"People assume that we know a lot about a cheetah . . . because they go back thousands of years," said Steven L. Monfort, the zoo's associate director for conservation and science. Not so, he said. "We don't know very much about how to keep them healthy, for example. They have medical issues that we're just starting to understand."

Why the focus on cheetahs?

"Because we have the top people in the world who understand and have that history of working with cheetahs," he said. "And we want to take that as far as we can."

On Thursday, the zoo's team of cheetah experts led a preview tour of the facility and showed off the first lucky residents, who were moved from the National Zoo last month.

Today, in addition to the unveiling ceremony, the research center will host the first day of its annual two-day open house. Hours are 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., and admission is $25 a car.

Alas, the cheetahs are off-limits to the public.

Zoo senior scientist David E. Wildt, an expert on cheetah reproduction, said that there are about 250 cheetahs in captivity in North America but that only 22 percent of the females reproduce.

The National Zoo is still home to three other cheetahs: brothers Draco, Granger and Zabini. Although it is likely that they will be sent temporarily to Front Royal for breeding purposes, officials said they intend to keep cheetahs on display at the zoo.

Female cheetahs are solitary in the wild, Wildt said, whereas males congregate in groups called coalitions.

Zazi and Tumai, both of whom have had litters in the past, were reclining in the grass Thursday afternoon in separate large enclosures surrounded by an eight-foot-high chain-link fence.

"They're in heaven," Wildt said.

Asked where the other cheetahs for study would come from, he said: "We're going to have to produce them."

The facility's enclosures are bisected by a "lovers' lane," a walkway along which, in the future, male cheetahs will be paraded before the females.

"Females are quite choosy," said Adrienne Crosier, a zoo research associate who has studied cheetahs in Namibia.

Cheetahs are said to be able to accelerate from zero to 60 mph in seconds. Their claws don't fully retract, which provides extra traction, and the long black "tear" streaks below their eyes cut down on sun glare, the scientists said.

But they also do a lot of lounging around.

"They're so laid back, these two," Crosier said, Zazi in particular. "She's used to Connecticut Avenue" -- the National Zoo's address in Woodley Park in Northwest Washington.

Cheetahs are so generally relaxed that they can be domesticated, Crosier said, and are sometimes used as guard animals in Namibia.

On Thursday, she and Lang, long poles in hand, entered Zazi's enclosure to show how the cheetah can be herded.

"Even though they're considered one of the big cats, this is a species that we feel comfortable with in terms of our staff working," Wildt said, "as long as they have at least two people in the yard at a given time."

Crosier noted: "We don't do this with lions and tigers."

She and Lang entered cautiously.

"No running!" Crosier called out. "No bending down!"

Bending down makes a person look more prey-size, she said.

"We'll keep a certain distance, a flight distance," Lang said. "And she'll just keep walking. She won't turn. She won't hiss and growl at us. She won't run. That's the norm."

Wildt watched intently. "I just want to make sure they're okay," he said.

They were. Zazi warily moved away from the curators as they maneuvered her around the yard, and when they left she headed back to the shade.

The fall afternoon was advancing. Dinner would be served soon: a kind of beef mash that looks like liverwurst. Then nightfall. Real nightfall. Not like the city. Here, it got truly dark. Just like the dark in the wild.