Cheetah Foster Family

Wednesday, 29 December 2010 | by Pat's Picks

There’s an exceptionally cute foster family featured in today’s Washington Post. A mother cheetah with a 2-week-old baby of her own has adopted a 3-week-old cub that trainers thought had very little chance of surviving with his birth mother. Animal behaviorists say this is only the sixth case of “cross-fostering” to ever occur, and that it could provide a breakthrough for cheetah experts. Apparently, cheetahs usually give birth to three or four cubs at a time. Single cubs lead a doomed existence because they cannot stimulate their mother’s milk production by themselves. But cheetah experts say cross-fostering could provide a way around this snare, at least for cubs raised in captivity.

Here is an insanely cute photo gallery of the foster siblings hanging out.

And here are the foster sibs fighting for milk: