We have seen the baby cheetahs, live and in person. This past weekend, during a somewhat impromptu trip to SD - impromptu meaning only planned about a week in advance - we went to the zoo and saw the baby cheetahs in the nursery during their feeding time. We meaning LSPE (Heidi) and I. They were beyond cute. They're at the stage where they can just walk, but not very well, and end up falling over and flopping around a lot.
The four were removed one by one from the "playpen" where they're kept and bottle-fed by their human attendant. The chosen cub would be held in her lap, being a litlte less than the size of an average house cat at this point, and would be pawing at her and the bottle in its eagerness to get at it. According to the sign at the nursery, they consume about 20% of their body weight every day, and as the feeding goes on, you can see their belly swelling and swelling, until at the end it's like they've swallowed a football.
At this point that cub was be placed in the the pen and the next one retrieved. The one just fed would promptly fall over and go to sleep, which presented a problem, as the cubs still in the pen who hadn't been fed were still rambunctious and very much wanting to play. We watched for the longest time as one just-fed cub tried to go to sleep while it's brother or sister kept jumping on it, falling over it, sitting on it, rolling on it, all executed with the lack of dexterity characteristic of its age. The poor fed cub kept laying its head down on the bed, where it would be asleep instantly, until the other came back and sat on it again. The one was absolutely determined to go to sleep, and the other equally determined not to let it. Unspeakably cute. We watched until all four cubs had been fed.
Which is to say, by all means go to the SD zoo and peek into the nursery if you at all can.
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