Cheetahs of the Kalahari

A three-week-old cub squashes one of its two litter mates during a brief visit by Mills to the den while the mother was out hunting. Mills and his team need to count the cubs and collect DNA from fur samples in order to establish paternity. Such brief interactions do not disturb the cheetahs, and they have never observed any adverse reaction by the mother or cubs.

For the past five years, Gus Mills and his wife have been studying the approximately 350 cheetahs that live in the Kalahari, a highly arid environment consisting primarily of vegetated sand dunes. In often scorching conditions, Mills tracks cheetah lifestyle patterns through a variety of data collection methods. Mills is a National Geographic Big Cats grantee.

A cheetah scans for steenbok from the top of a dune. This "sit and wait" hunting strategy is the most frequent way in which they locate steenbok. Their eyesight is incredible, and they can often detect the movement of prey from several hundred meters—even before Mills can with binoculars.

A leopard moves along the calcrete bank of a dry riverbed. Leopards are also able to exist in the dry Kalahari, although they appear to do so at a lower density than cheetahs.

A female cheetah pursues an adult male springbok. Some females specialize in killing these large, gazelle-like antelopes. Springbok are strictly confined to the dry riverbeds and pans of the Kalahari.

Two male cheetahs mark a tree with their scent. Cheetah males often form coalitions of two or three and cooperate in defending a territory against other males.

Two large cheetah cubs follow their mother (unseen) along a dune at sunset. Adult Kalahari cheetahs are quite active at night, although females with cubs are usually not, probably to avoid encounters with other large carnivores.

A mother and her large cubs move through the dunes of the Kalahari. Cheetah cubs are dependent on their mother for about 15 months before they are able to fend for themselves, first as a sibling group and later as solitary females or males or as males in a coalition.

A sibling group of cheetahs rests on a Kalahari dune.

At about three months of age, the well-fed cubs become quite active, chasing and tackling each other as they start to hone their hunting skills for later life.

A mother cheetah feeds her four six-week-old cubs a springbok in what could be their first experience of meat. This mother was successful in raising all four male cubs to independence.