Related Resources
Meet the Zoo's cats
Watch the cheetah cam
Support the Zoo's cheetah conservation program
Hear Zoo biologist Craig Saffoe talk about our three new male cheetahs and what makes these cats so special in this interview with Washington Post Radio’s Jerry Phillips. This interview originally aired on Washington Post Radio 107.7 FM and 1500 AM on June 17.
Adopt a cheetah, meerkat, or another African animal.
The National Zoo Store Online offers an array of books, educational games, and more related to the African Savanna.
Visit
the Smithsonian's African Art Museum.
Meet the Zoo's Cheetahs
Three male cheetah brothers and one female cheetah live at the National Zoo's Cheetah Conservation Station. The brothers arrived at the Zoo in April 2007, and the female arrived in December 2007.
The Zoo participates in the Species Survival Plan (SSP) for cheetahs, which is part of a program to save endangered species. Animal-care staff hope that our female cheetah will breed with one of the brothers in the future, as recommended by the SSP. It will be up to her to choose which of the cheetahs, if any, she wants to breed with—the same type of breeding behavior that a female cheetah in the wild would display.
We can tell our cheetahs apart by looking at the stripes on their tails. Every cheetah's tail is unique, like people's fingerprints. Even the two sides of a cheetah's tail are different. 
Cheetah Fact Sheet
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Draco, Granger, and Zabini, three brothers born in 2005, came to the Zoo in April 2007 from White Oak Conservation Center in Yulee, Florida. Their names come from characters in the Harry Potter series of novels by J.K. Rowling. They weigh 104 to 110 pounds each. |
Amani, the Zoo's two-year-old female cheetah, came to the Zoo in late December 2007 from Wildlife Safari, an animal park in Winston, Oregon. She had been off exhibit until March as she gradually adjusted to keepers, her new yard ,and the Zoo’s other cheetahs, a trio of brothers. Amani can be seen in her own yard at the Cheetah Conservation Station.
Two females that had been at the Zoo since 2004 and each had a litter of cubs have been moved to the Cheetah Science Facility at the Zoo's Conservation and Research Center (CRC) in Front Royal, Virginia. The nine-acre facility will house 14 to 20 cheetahs in spacious, outdoor enclosures, with indoor spaces for inclement weather. The facility includes an animal-care building to house animal keepers and researchers and allow them to observe, manage, and care for the animals. more
Tumai was born at the Phoenix Zoo in 2000. Her name is Swahili for "hope." She arrived at the Zoo in May 2004.
Giving hope to many, Tumai gave birth to a litter of four cubs—two males and two females—on November 23, 2004. This was the Zoo's first ever litter of cheetahs.
She weighs about 98 pounds.
Zazi, Swahili for "fertile" or "fruitful," was born at Fossil Rim Wildlife Center in Texas in 2001. She came to the Zoo in June 2004.
Living up to her name, Zazi became a mother of five cubs—three females and two males—on April 14, 2005.
She weighs about 109 pounds.
Two litters of cheetahs were born at the Zoo in recent years: Four cheetahs—two males and two females—born on November 23, 2004, and five cheetahs—three girls and two boys—born on April 1, 2005. All of these cheetahs have left for other zoos.
The litter born in 2004 marked the the first cheetah births in the Zoo's history.
As part of the Cheetah Species Survival Plan, the males have gone to the Milwaukee County Zoo, and the females have gone to New Jersey's Cape May Zoo.
See the cubs' 
photo gallery.
The female cubs from the second litter left the Zoo in September 2006 for Disney's Animal Kingdom. The males went to Lowry Park Zoo in March 2007.
