The audio manipulation not only worked, it surprised the scientists by inspiring a bit of the real thing.
"We were delighted when the stutter-barks from this 'new' member of the cheetah group stimulated all our males to start stutter-barking themselves," Anderson said.
"The females heard these calls and started breeding with the males that we wanted them to breed with."
Shortly afterward Kenya was found to be pregnant, and three months later she gave birth to a single, as-yet unnamed cub.
Since inexperienced cheetah moms often have trouble rearing a lone baby, animal care staff decided to hand-raise the newborn.
Park staff are hopeful that the success could lead to more captive cheetah births in the future.
|
SOURCES AND RELATED WEB SITES
|
