About the friendship of cats with dogs

If you visit the San Diego Zoo and decide to look at cheetahs, you may well see a dog next to one of them, and this is not a random dog that ran in, but a "companion" specially selected as part of the Animal Ambassadors program.

In the last century, about 100 thousand cheetahs lived in the wild, now there are less than 12 thousand of them and they are completely exterminated in 13 countries. A formidable-looking predator, the cheetah is timid by nature, most cheetahs lead a lonely lifestyle and do not allow anyone to approach them, which greatly complicates the process of reproduction in captivity, especially given the fact that the female's estrus begins only in the presence of a male.

Oddly enough, cheetahs tolerate the presence of dogs much easier than the presence of another individual of their species, moreover, the presence of a dog nearby allows you to tame the instincts of cheetahs and make them more tolerant of the presence of other cheetahs and even people.

4 of the 19 cheetahs at the San Diego Zoo have a companion dog, they take them mainly from shelters, given the nature of the animal and bring three-month-old puppies with cheetahs of the same age. The dog occupies a dominant position in the pair and serves as a model for behavior, as well as protects its ward. Since childhood, the animals spend almost all the time together.

The presence of the dog made it possible to suppress the cowardly feline nature and not only contribute to the great success of the zoo in breeding cheetahs (135 over the past 40 years), but also create an opportunity for visitors to see the speed of the fastest of nature's runners live. The cheetah accelerates from 0 to 60 miles (96.6 km) per hour in 3.4 seconds.

Speed is very important for survival, as the cheetah is not adapted to fight with larger predators. The cheetah is able to reach a speed of 60-70 miles (96.6-112.6 km) per hour, depending on its size, but they can only run like this for 20-30 seconds, if the run lasts a minute or more, the animal risks dying, since overexertion and the heat of exhaustion can literally "fry" its insides at such a speed.

The only companion dog that was not taken from the shelter is the Anatolian Shepherd Yeti.

No one knows exactly how the idea of settling dogs with cheetahs came about, but it was this breed that helped to promote it.

In 1981, two cheetahs were transferred to the zoo along with the dogs and the condition of the transfer was not to separate the animals, since they were used to each other. At the same time, Anatolian Shepherds indirectly helped to preserve the cheetah population in Africa.

About 20 years ago, Dr. Lori Marker, founder and director of the Cheetah Conservation Fund in the Southern African nation of Namibia, imported these dogs from Turkey and gave them to local farmers to protect their herds. Large dogs successfully drove off predators and deprived farmers of the need to kill animals.

For the first time in 30 years, the cheetah population began to grow.