The East African savanna, a dry tropical grassland, is home to a rich array of spectacular animals. Predators like lions and cheetahs prey on grazing and browsing animals like zebras and gazelles. Stately birds like kori bustards stalk smaller prey while rarely seen naked mole-rats inhabit burrows on the savanna. You can see these species and more without traveling to Africa. Just come to the Zoo or take a virtual visit. African species at the Zoo.
Animals from many parts of Africa make their home at the Zoo. The Zoo's Cheetah Conservation Station is home to Grevy's zebras, scimitar-horned oryx, dama gazelles, cheetahs, and other animals. Five cheetah cubs were born on May 28, 2011, to six-year-old Amani at the Zoo's Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute in Front Royal, Virginia. Amani gave birth to a single male cub in December 2010. It is being reared by Zazi, who gave birth to a singleton ten days later. Read about those cubs.
Follow the cubs' development in updates by Lacey Braun, the lead cheetah keeper at SCBI. Read the news about the births. | See photos of all the cheetah cubs at SCBI. Amani’s cubs received their last set of vaccinations today. The veterinary staff gave them all a clean bill of health! The cubs are now 12 weeks old and weigh between eight and a half to ten and a half pounds. Today was the last time that we will handle the cubs, so I will be training them to step onto the adult cheetah scale to be weighed from now on. We will also not be able to shave them anymore so we need to be able to tell them apart before their hair grows back on their shave marks. We have taken photos of each of their faces for identification and we will be continually writing down their differences.