by Victoria Yu and Mary Wykstra

Another update on “Mom,” whom we collared back in 2005—and unfortunately the last. In September 2007 we received Mom's signal for the final time: her radio collar's battery had run out after 28 months of service. Her third litter (that we know of) was born in February 2007; we believe she gave birth to four cubs and adopted three older cubs from a neighboring mother, leaving her with seven young ones.

But wait… she was not done yet. If anyone was following her story from the beginning they would remember that we estimated Mom to be about 7 years old. She had 3 broken teeth but was otherwise in quite good condition.

After the collar stopped transmitting, people in the region continued reporting sightings of the cheetah with the funny collar but that in March 2008 the family separated. In June 2008 she was seen with another small cub. By February 2009 she was reported on her own. We are not certain if the cub survived or not as this would have been quite early for it to be on her own. In April 2009 she was seen with two new little fluff balls. In December 2009 she was seen with the two cubs about 3/4 her size

Since we began tracking Mom, we've discovered she moves through areas of dense vegetation, steep hills, and high human settlement—not at all what we're used to seeing from cheetahs. Her cubs have reached independence at young ages (14 – 16 months) but they do not seem to stray far from her range. She has defied our traditional notions of where cheetahs will live and what they will eat, challenging us to further research.

This is the basis of the further habitat monitoring by ACK Senior Researcher Cosmas Wambua and telemetry and stress monitoring by Chirfuyu Backett.

For that we thank her, and we wish her well.