CHEETAHS are notoriously reluctant to breed in captivity. But keeping the females away from each other may solve the problem.
Breeding attempts often fail because apparently healthy females don’t ovulate normally. Now David Wildt and his colleagues at the Smithsonian National Zoological Park’s research centre in Front Royal, Virginia, have shown this is due to social conditions. They kept 8 adult females in pairs for six months then separated them for six months. Normal hormone cycles resumed within days of the animals being separated (Animal Conservation, vol 5, p 291).
Cheetahs are solitary animals in the wild, so company…
