Cheetara, go Find Lion-O

As of today, I have been in Namibia for one week. I have loved every minute of it and have enjoyed seeing the sites and making new friends. I am so thankful that I have seven more weeks to explore this beautiful country.  Probably my favorite thing I have done thus far is visiting the Cheetah Conservation Fund, which is north of Windhoek.

When we got there, we split up into two groups. My groups went on a ride to see the cheetahs first. The Cheetah Conservation takes in orphan cheetahs that farmers find and if possible puts them back into their natural habitat. Therefore, the cheetahs we saw were in an enclosed space and they were not afraid to come up to our truck. Our guide, Charles, said that one cheetah in particular was not afraid of humans and would get impatient and take the meat out of his hand if he did not give it to her quickly. Now I am not usually a cat person, but the cheetahs were so beautiful and in a lot of ways they just acted like a big house cat. I took about 200 pictures while I was at the conservation, but here are some of my favorites plus a video.

I thought that we had gotten pretty close to the cheetah, but following the tour they brought four, 17  week-old, orphaned cheetah siblings on leashes. They immediately plopped on the ground like any normal house cat would and bathed in the sun. The director of the CCF talked about how they raised puppies on the Conservation to give to farmers as guard dogs for their cattle as an alternative to shooting at the cheetahs who might attack their cattle. As a part of their efforts, the CCF will also track down, trap, and take in problem cheetahs who are attacking cattle. To identify that they have caught the correct cheetah, they will collect their scat and put it in a sock. Then they will take it back to their lab, put it in the laundry machine so all that is left is hair. From the hair they can identify what animals the cheetah has been eating and if it has been eating cattle and is the problem cheetah. Here are some more pictures of the cheetahs and animals around the Conservation. 

Shout-out to all of my Mayo Clinic friends. I got to see a lab at the CCF. It was pretty simple though, they had fridges for pre-PCR and post-PCR and of course a PCR machine. What they do in the lab is that they get dogs to track down cheetah scat and then they use the cheetah scat to get a census of how many cheetahs are in Namibia. They say that choose dogs who are very playful or food-oriented. Maybe Izzy needs a day job? They do take volunteers and interns, which I just might consider doing at some point. 

Here are some things I learned about cheetahs: 

• They have a horrible sense of smell. Our guide threw a piece of meat by them and it took them quite awhile to find it. 
• They are the fastest land animal, but they can only run that fast for a short distance. Otherwise they walk very slowly. We learned this when we were stuck behind an ambling cheetah in our truck for about five minutes. 
• They don't have a collarbone, so they can run fast. 
• You can tell a cheetah and a jaguar apart because cheetahs have teardrops under their eyes and jaguars do not. Cheetahs also have spots and jaguars have rosettes. 

We got to see them feed the cheetahs. They are eating horse with a protein powder on it. They have to cut out all the bones, because cheetahs have very small teeth. Therefore, they only eat the organs and leave the rest for scavengers.

This is a hornbill. 

White-necked vultures. 

As you can see I learned a lot when I went there and I loved it, even though it took us three hours to drive back to Windhoek. It was perfect though because on our way back we saw a full double rainbow and lots of other animals including baboons, which had eluded us on our hike. Who knows, maybe I will visit again soon as an intern?