FIELD NOTES: JULY 21
10:15: The female cheetah Mahamba is resting with her five young cubs in the shade of some jackalberry trees. Mahamba is suddenly alert and I see she has spotted a single male impala moving slowly through thick woodland about 60 metres away; he is unaware of the cheetahs. The bush is extremely dense, less than ideal for a chase, yet Mahamba begins stalking. She is achingly careful about each step and it takes her 30 minutes to cover 15 metres; I have never seen a stalk like this. 10:45: The impala looks directly at Mahamba. She is frozen, completely immobile. They stare at each other in a stalemate for a minute before the impala moves off slowly. He has not recognised the danger. Suddenly, Mahamba takes off. She hurtles into the bush and disappears. I catch a glimpse of the impala in full flight, with Mahamba close behind. It is impossible to follow her, so I wait with the cubs. They are very alert, all sitting upright, listening. At 11.10 (24 minutes later), I hear Mahamba call in the distance. One cub chirps loudly in response and Mahamba calls again; as one, all five cubs race off toward the calls. I relocate them five minutes later. Mahamba has killed the impala (a five- to six-year-old male) and the cubs are feeding. I am astonished at how dense the bush is here. Cheetahs must be more versatile hunters than widely depicted.
This hunt took place in the Phinda Game Reserve, a small privately owned reserve in the humid, closed acacia woodlands of South Africa’s northern KwaZulu-Natal Province. In 1992-1993, 17 cheetahs were reintroduced into Phinda after the last resident population had been wiped out in 1941. One of the released cheetahs was the female I came to call Mahamba (above). Saved from a farmer’s bullet in central Namibia, she went on to have 16 cubs at Phinda before, in advanced old age, she was killed by a leopard four days before Christmas 1996.
Throughout this book, direct observations of Mahamba and the other Phinda cheetahs illustrate the species’ unexpected versatility: their ability to hunt in dense habitats, their prolific reproductive potential, their skill in taking large prey, and more. Alongside the field notes, the book compiles observations from throughout the cheetah’s distribution, ranging from the 34-year-old exhaustive study of Serengeti cheetahs headed by Sarah Durant and Tim Caro, to fleeting glimpses of the last remaining Asiatic cheetahs in Iran. We hope to answer some of the common questions about the cheetah, overturn myths and provide some insight into what makes the cheetah tick. Why do males form coalitions? Are female cheetahs poor mothers? Do cheetahs kill people? And, most importantly, is the species headed towards extinction?
Above everything else, we hope that this book inspires. Cheetah mothers like Mahamba successfully provided for their cubs for millions of years before modern humans appeared on African savannahs. But the pressure of an expanding human population now threatens their continued survival, and cheetahs need our help. Whether it is donating time or money to field conservation projects, writing letters to governments, or simply visiting the game parks and reserves where cheetahs survive, the actions of people will determine the cheetah’s fate in the next century. Of all things, let this book not be a memorial to the last of the sprinting cats.