Related Resources
Meet the Zoo's cats
Watch the cheetah cam
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 cheetah brothers live at the National Zoo's Cheetah Conservation Station.
The Zoo also houses cheetahs at the Cheetah Science Facility at the Zoo's Front Royal, Virginia, campus. The facility houses cheetahs in spacious, outdoor enclosures, with indoor spaces for inclement weather. It includes an animal-care building to house animal keepers and researchers and allow them to observe, manage, and care for the animals. 
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The Zoo participates in the Association of Zoos and Aquariums’ Cheetah Species Survival Plan (SSP), a cooperative breeding and conservation program with zoos throughout North America. In the wild, male cheetahs from the same litter live together in groups called coalitions. The bond among animals in a coalition is extremely strong, and managers maintain this natural social grouping in zoos. The three males will continue to be housed together.
The Zoo’s cheetahs in Washington and Front Royal are managed as one population and will continue to move between both locations depending on breeding recommendations from the SSP, research, and exhibit needs.
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
At the Zoo's Cheetah Conservation Station
Draco, Granger, and Zabini, three brothers born in 2005, came to the Zoo in April 2007 from White Oak Conservation Center in Yulee, Florida. They were transferred to the Virginia campus in November 2009 and returned to the D.C. campus in November 2010.
Their names come from characters in the Harry Potter series of novels by J.K. Rowling.
They weigh 104 to 110 pounds each.
Tumai was born at the Phoenix Zoo in 2000. Her name is Swahili for "hope." She arrived at the Zoo in May 2004 and has lived at the Cheetah Conservation Station and the Cheetah Science Facility at the Zoo's Conservation and Research Center (CRC) in Front Royal, Virginia, since then.
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.
At the Zoo's Cheetah Science Facility in Virginia
Amani, the Zoo's young female cheetah, came to the Zoo in late December 2007 from Wildlife Safari, an animal park in Winston, Oregon.
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 gave birth to another cub in December 2010. She is rearing her cub and Amani's. Read all about the cubs in keeper updates.
She weighs about 109 pounds.
There are several other cheetahs at the Zoo's Front Royal, Virginia, campus.
Two litters of cheetahs were born at the Zoo's D.C. campus 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.
