Cheetah cub dies at Kuno National Park due to weakness: Principal Chief Conservator of Forest

Sheopur (Madhya Pradesh) [India], May 23 : A cub of a female cheetah named Jwala died due to weakness at Kuno National Park in Madhya Pradesh's Sheopur district on Tuesday, an official said.

After the death of the cub, the total number of cubs has now been reduced to three at Kuno park.

Principal Chief Conservator of Forest (Wildlife) J S Chouhan told ANI, "On March 24 this year, a female cheetah named Jwala gave birth to four cubs. We are continuously monitoring them. After one and a half months, these cubs along with mother Jwala were being taken out and since then it was being observed that one cub was a little weak among them. It was not able to compete with the other three."

On Tuesday morning, the monitoring team found that all the cubs and mother cheetah were staying at the same place. After that three cubs and Jwala got up and went away. The team reached near the one cub lying there, saw it was alive and was trying to raise his head. Following which, the monitoring team called the veterinary team. They tried to take the cub to the hospital and tried to give her treatment there, but the cub died within 5 to 10 minutes in the morning itself, he said.

Speaking about the cause of death, PCCF Chouhan said, "The cause of death is due to immense weakness. Further, full scale post mortem will be done and after the PM report it will be known if there was any other problem or not.

The remaining three cubs are completely fit, good and very playful, he added.

When asked about three cheetahs that had already died in the past as well and the reasons for their deaths are not yet clear, he said, "The first female cheetah that died was the one who had kidney problems before she was brought here. The second cheetah had cardiopulmonary failure, which had problems in the heart and lungs. Its histopathological examination is still awaited, so the cause of death was heart and lungs failure, but wanted to know what caused it. The third casualty, in which one female cheetah died due to a violent interaction with male coalition. They had a lot of violent action with the female cheetah due to which she died."

Responding to questions being raised on the functioning at Kuno park and whether there is any kind of lapse as continuous death of cheetahs are being reported, he further said, "In all these cases, we do not think that there is any lapse or any mistake on the part of anyone. These are reasons that are beyond our control."