Hand-rearing the brothers, teaching them the life skills cheetahs need to survive, and observing the cubs as they pass through key stages of their development, Simon’s efforts to rehabilitate the cheetahs and reintroduce them to the world of wild cheetahs is filled with delight but also sadness. Simon becomes more deeply attached to the orphans, making difficult, yet critical decisions that determine their fate. When tragedy strikes, Simon is overcome with emotion, but has to make clear decisions for the welfare of Toki. Buy the DVD. This film premiered November 2007.

NATURE goes behind the scenes of The Cheetah Orphans in an interview with filmmaker Simon King.

Why was it so important for you to take a role in these cheetahs’ lives? How rare are cheetahs? How important is it for them to reproduce?

There are fewer than 13,000 cheetahs left in the wild, probably far fewer, though figures for some African countries are hard to tally. Every single one of them counts. Without human help, these cubs would certainly have died, their mother having been killed by a lion in a remote part of Northern Kenya. The cubs were discovered by some Samburu boys, and brought to Lewa Wildlife Conservancy. [The cheetahs] were exhausted, dehydrated and emaciated — on the verge of death. They were brought back from the brink by Jane and Ian Craig, who have tremendous experience with raising orphaned creatures. I first heard about [the cheetahs] when they had been with the Craigs for about four weeks and immediately offered my help.

What other options were there for the cheetah orphans besides you taking on their education? Was there any chance a wild cheetah mother could have adopted them?

There was very little chance of a wild cheetah mother adopting the cubs. First of all, one would have to find a wild mother with cubs of precisely the same age. And then, there is little chance such a mother would accept the offspring of another female. She would be very likely to reject and even injure them. The cubs were at death’s door. They could either be saved by human hand, or left to perish.

In the wild, would both parents be involved in raising the litter?

Only the female cheetah raises the young. The father has nothing whatsoever to do with the family. He may, from time to time, come and inspect the female, but this is more to see if she is ready to mate once more than through any fatherly tendencies!

Describe your commitment level once you made the decision to raise the cheetahs. How much time did you spend each day teaching Toki and Sambu?

Had the cubs died in the field, since they had been left alone after their mother had been killed by a lion, one could argue it would have been a natural end to their short lives. The moment human beings became involved in their welfare, I believe we all had a responsibility to try and do the very best for them for as long as was necessary. I shared the job of caring for the cubs with my wife, Marguerite, the Craig family and a few members of the Lewa Wildlife team, most notably Stephen Yiasoi Siapan, a local Masai whose affinity for Toki and Sambu was very special. Between all of us, the cubs had 24-hour care for the first months of their life. As the cheetahs matured, we maintained the 24-hour vigil at first and then kept watch for 14 hours a day (all daylight hours).

Simon filming Toki

Do baby cheetahs normally bond as strongly as Sambu and Toki did?

Cheetah cubs always form a very strong bond. This is particularly important for male cheetahs (Toki and Sambu were both male) since the bond will last through to adulthood. A coalition of male cheetahs has a far greater chance of breeding with females they encounter than do solitary males.

When you and Stephen babysat Toki day and night after Sambu died, he was not only tolerant of your presence but he almost seemed to expect that one of you would sleep beside him at night. Did Toki or Sambu’s acceptance of you and Stephen surprise you? Is it common for human-raised cheetahs to get so attached to their caretakers?

However, the downside of this was that spending time with him undid a lot of work we had put in to try and distance ourselves from the brothers. Just before Sambu died, both Toki and Sambu were living wild lives, hunting entirely for themselves and were very wary of humans they did not know. After Sambu’s death, I felt Toki needed the protection and support of his human guardians once more. Our close contact helped him to survive, but meant that we had to start again with getting him to be fully independent and distrustful of people.

I was not surprised by his acceptance of us; he had known us all his life. It was very touching though. Toki was very distressed after his brother Sambu was killed by a lion. He had come to expect company day and night. Since he was completely used to Stephen and me, it was the least we could do to provide him with company. He was also very vulnerable at this time, frequently calling for his brother. Those calls would attract unwanted company like lions and leopards.

You said you were terrified when you released Toki to the main reserve at Ol Pejeta. What threats would Toki, in particular, be most vulnerable to as a human-raised cheetah?

All cheetahs are vulnerable to attack from other predators. The orphans’ mother had been killed by a lion, and Sambu, too, suffered the same fate. Every day, Toki would run the same risk as any wild cheetah of coming into contact with lions, leopards, hyenas, or a coalition of other male cheetahs, all of which would try to kill him. While within the 90,000 acres of Ol Pejeta Wildlife Conservancy, Toki would not encounter any human that might do him harm. But if he found his way out of the reserve he could come into contact with poachers and herdsmen who would not be so harmless.

With so many threats to cheetahs in the wild, do cheetahs ever die of old age or do they usually suffer a violent, unfortunate death?

I have never seen, nor read an account of a wild cheetah dying of old age, though old age may take the edge off their senses, making them more vulnerable to attack or reducing their ability to hunt efficiently. Statistically, a male cheetah is considered getting very old if he reaches seven or eight years, so tough is their life. In captivity they may live a great deal longer; up to double that figure.

Do you think Toki may have ventured into human territory because of his human upbringing and tolerance of people? Would a wild cheetah likely have done the same?

On the contrary, Toki wandered out of the reserve and into hostile country in the north just because he could! The area he visited does have wild cheetah walking through it, as does the reserve itself. I believe he may have felt compelled to keep walking north because he smelt another male cheetah and recalled the near deadly attack he suffered at the jaws of the male coalition in Lewa. I think he was simply looking for a patch of ground where he could be king, or at least where he would be left well alone by other male cheetahs. The fact that there were human beings in the area was entirely incidental to him. He could have no idea that the people he would encounter there might not be friendly. Nor was he seeking human company, just a place to live.

How have Toki and Sambu changed you?

Working so closely with such charismatic, beautiful big cats is a once in a lifetime experience. Sharing time with Toki and Sambu has given me a deeper understanding of these wonderful creatures than I could ever have gleaned with a lifetime of observations in the wild. Simply being with them when they lost their first milk teeth is one example of the privileged contact and observations we had. Being part of their team has been both humbling and enriching beyond words. It has also been very hard at times to make decisions based on pragmatism, when my emotional self has become so closely linked to their fortunes. Very tough decisions had to be made in the face of huge risks. I sincerely hope that Toki and Sambu would agree that we made the right ones, despite their hardships.

Why was it important that this film broadcast on Nature? What do you hope viewers take away from this Nature program?

It is very exciting to think that Toki and Sambu’s story will reach a new audience through Nature. And not just any audience, but one whose care and commitment to ensuring the natural world has an enduring future on this planet is, I am certain, a life priority. I sincerely hope viewers can share something of the wonder and beauty that our experience raising the cheetah orphans has offered us. I also hope that it increases awareness of some of the difficulties faced in contemporary conservation projects. Kenya is a magnificent country with a host of natural riches. But these riches take careful management if they are to be there in perpetuity. I hope that the story of these cheetahs in some way helps to reflect the bigger conservation issues faced by the wild places on this earth.

Anything else that you would like to convey?

If anyone wishes to offer help for Toki and other wildlife in Kenya, then we have set up a trust in his name. The Toki Trust falls under the umbrella of Tusk Trust, a charity devoted to sustainable conservation projects in Africa. Resources raised by the trust will be spent to ensure Toki’s well-being, maintain a sustainable plan for his future and will contribute to the ongoing development of conservation projects in Kenya, most notably in Lewa and Ol Pejeta Wildlife Conservancies.

I will continue to post details of how Toki is getting on, on my own website — www.simonkingwildlife.com — on a regular basis.

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In The Cheetah Orphans, filmmaker Simon King and the team of wildlife professionals at the Lewa Wildlife Conservancy, took on the challenge of raising two orphaned cheetah cubs, Toki and Sambu, after the cubs’ mother was killed by a lion. To successfully raise the cheetahs would mean seeing them safely to adulthood and hopefully to a free existence in the wild, where they could eventually parent their own cubs, thus contributing to the cheetah population.

Simon and the cubs would be up against some serious obstacles. Cheetahs face some of the toughest challenges in the natural world, and the survival of the species is in doubt. Loss of habitat due to human encroachment, death at the hands of local farmers, a high infant mortality rate (90 percent!), and a shrinking geographical range are among the factors that limit the cheetah’s survival. Simon and the Lewa team successfully brought the cubs past the critical infant stage, during which they are most susceptible to danger. But Simon’s hardest task in rehabilitating the brothers would be to teach them basic survival skills so they could live on their own, without Simon’s constant supervision. Simon invested thousands of hours to get the cheetahs past the point of danger. In the end, nature claimed Sambu as a casualty, but Simon, along with the other caretakers at Lewa, decided that Toki should continue to live a wild and free existence. Today Toki lives a healthy and, hopefully, happy life in the Ol Pejeta wildlife refuge, where he is safe from most of the threats of the outside world.

In the end, nature claimed Sambu as a casualty.

In the end, nature claimed Sambu as a casualty. Can the story of Toki and Sambu be considered a rehabilitation success? “Success” in the world of wildlife rescue is a difficult thing to define. According to the National Wildlife Rehabilitators Association, an organization that supports the science and profession of wildlife rehabilitation, the ultimate goal of wildlife rehabilitation is to release injured, orphaned, and diseased wild creatures back into the best possible natural habitat. The outcome of wildlife rescue depends on many individual factors: the particular species being rehabilitated, the starting condition of the animal, and the availability of a safe natural environment for it to return to. Rehabilitation plans and progress must be considered on a case-by-case basis, but the goal is always to end with an animal that is healthy, happy, independent, and — ideally — ready to return to the wild.

Simon spent a great deal of time teaching the cheetah cubs to survive but in the end could not protect them from every threat. Particularly at a sanctuary like Lewa where other wild animals roam, the caretakers can never fully protect the animal without sacrificing some freedom. Toki and Sambu were not a first for Lewa in wildlife rehabilitation. The sanctuary often takes in orphaned wildlife whose parents were the victims of some natural or human act of violence. In 2002, the staff at Lewa received Daisy, an orphaned Oryx. Despite being close to death, Daisy grew to be very independent but still came home every night to sleep in her stable. Daisy even gave birth to a calf during her time at Lewa, living life as a wild Oryx. Sadly, in 2006 Daisy fell victim to an attack by lions. Her calf, six months old, was with her at the time of the incident and survived. Despite her death, Lewa’s staff still thinks of Daisy as a rehabilitation success story; she lived her life in total freedom and managed to have her own calf.

Maria Diekmann is the founder and director of REST, Rare and Endangered Species Trust, an organization dedicated to the preservation of endangered species in Namibia. Though Maria has extensive knowledge of vulture behavior and biology, and in particular the Cape Griffon Vulture, she doesn’t take on the role of surrogate vulture mommy for her orphans. “This is the job I give my other birds,” says Maria. “Typically, the orphan may start out alone in an aviary or with another orphan so it can build up its confidence.” Once it has shown some signs of adjustment, Maria will transfer the orphan to the non-releasable aviary so that he gets used to other birds as well as food competition and the hierarchy within that vulture community. The last stage is for the orphan to bunk with the wild releasable birds so he builds up even more confidence and is better prepared for the wild.

“We have had fantastic results raising baby vultures and getting them successfully back into the wild,” says Maria. Just this year, REST saw a pair of hand-raised orphans return to the center to breed after they had been released to the wild two years ago — the first such case in South Africa of an orphaned, released, and monitored vulture returning to its site of release.

“I held those two birds for two years with other wild rehab vultures from South Africa (in order) to get them used to the climate, area, etc.” The orphans were cared for at a site where REST feeds 350 to 1,000 free, wild vultures each week. According to Maria, that was just what the orphans needed. “They had to act like a vulture, get their food for themselves amongst the others and were only separated by a fence to the free ranging wild birds,” says Maria.

Maria has rehabilitated everything from bats to antelope but says vulture orphans are actually easier than most other species to get back into the wild. The reason, explains Maria, is their highly social nature. Vultures “like to be with each other,” says Maria. “They accept each other easily and use each other for security, etc. at feeds. They allow everyone to eat at any carcass or fly in any thermal even though there is a social order. Vultures like other vultures and this makes any learning curve easier for an orphan.”

Though Maria tries to see as many of her rehabilitated vultures released to the wild as possible, it isn’t always possible. If there is serious injury of other damange that will compromise the bird’s chances of survival in the wild, Maria has to hold the bird permanently at the center. But release to the wild is clearly her main goal. “If he has a chance in the wild,” says Maria, “I must give it to him. People always think it makes me sad to release a bird or any animal that I have spent so much time with, but this is so untrue. Those are my very best days and all that I work for. We can keep the Cape Griffon species alive in captivity — anyone can — but the challenge is can we keep it alive in the wild. That is what they deserve.”

Regardless of the species, rehabilitation is a demanding process, fraught with challenges and triumphs. Rehabilitators will inevitably face difficult choices, such as Simon’s decision to release the cheetah orphans into the wild with so many threats looming. As the main decision-maker and overseer of the fate of the animals, wildlife rehabilitation is a huge responsibility. But it’s also enormously rewarding and an invaluable contribution to the our world.

A cheetah cub and its mom are an inseparable pair for the first six weeks of the vulnerable baby cheetah’s life, when the cub is completely dependent on its mother for food, protection, warmth, and shelter. The mother is so important to teaching and protecting the cub, the baby will stay with her until it is two years old, when mom leaves to mate again.

Toki and Sambu were just four weeks old when their mother was killed by a lion. The pair was still entirely dependant on her. They hadn’t yet started to follow her around during her kills as they would have at six weeks, or to eat meat as they would at the age of one — never mind starting to hunt independently at eighteen months. Cheetah cubs observe their mother closely for their first two years, learning from her all of the tricks of survival. With no natural skills carried over from their mom, the orphaned cubs’ chances in this world looked bleak.

Simon King was determined to raise the odds for the babies, but he knew the task would not be easy given the threats to cheetah cubs. These odds were not improved by the fact that Simon was a human, not a cheetah. “I could not in the least be confident of my role as a surrogate parent. I had read a great deal from a variety of sources explaining the pitfalls of raising orphaned cheetahs, and how very unlikely it was that they would be able to lead a life in the wild. I did feel, however, that it was worth a shot, for their sakes. Having spent over 20 years watching and filming wild cheetahs, I had a reasonable background knowledge of their needs and behavior. But applying this to raising Toki and Sambu was uncharted territory for me,” says Simon.

Simon King feeding Toki The filmmaker had to prepare the cubs for a lifetime of survival. His experience with cheetahs taught him that he would have to start right off their education with good hunting skills. Once the cubs learned the basics of the hunt, they could fare pretty well for themselves. In fact, the brothers would likely stay together for the rest of their lives, as male cheetahs often do, forming a coalition against rival male cheetahs.

Simon’s four-week-old cubs had probably never left their lair or sampled solid food. Eight weeks is when mom typically introduces solid food to them — their first lesson on what they should eat. Simon’s first task would be to teach the cubs not only what to eat, but also how to make a kill.

“Hunting comes to cheetahs like walking comes to humans,” says Simon. “They do it naturally, but some do it sooner and more efficiently than others.” At eight months old, when the cubs have lost the last of their milk teeth, they begin to make their first clumsy attempts at stalking and catching. A cub’s first attempts at a kill resemble play behavior more than a vicious attack. Cubs stalk, chase, and wrestle each other and even chase prey that they know they cannot catch because it is too fast or too large. “Few cheetahs will make a solo kill before they are 14 months old, and many much later. There are many subtleties of stalking and prey choice that must be acquired through trial and error. This is the same for wild or hand-reared cheetahs,” says Simon. A mother cheetah tries to teach her cubs how to improve their hunting skills by bringing back her catch live for the cubs. She usually begins with something easy like a newborn antelope and lets the cubs practice chasing and capturing until they are doing it like it’s second nature. Simon introduced the cubs to hunting using a dummy rabbit dragged about on a string. But Simon, of course, was not a mother cheetah and was not going to outrace and bring down newborn antelopes. So Toki and Sambu had to learn how to feed themselves the hard way — by testing their skills each day in the field alone.

Simon King feeding Toki

The cubs eventually proved their hunting prowess enough for Simon to move on to other essential life lessons. Besides teaching them how to feed themselves, Simon’s schooling also had to teach the cubs to be fearful of threats from the natural world and, perhaps even more importantly, from humans. “Cheetahs have to learn about the many dangers they face as one of the most delicate big cats,” says Simon. “They are particularly vulnerable to attacks from lion, leopard, and hyena and even other cheetahs. Man, of course, is an ever-present threat for many big cats in the wild, and most cheetahs learn to fear humans from their earliest days. This would be one of the biggest problems we faced with the orphans.”

To instill a fear of humans in the brothers, Simon and the Lewa staff had to do a little acting. “We would set up ambushes, with Rangers dressed in civilian clothes. When Toki and Sambu stumbled into the trap, the rangers would run at them, shouting and screaming and throwing sticks and soil. It was not designed to hurt the boys, but rather to terrify them. It worked very well. After a while, both Toki and Sambu would growl and slink away if they saw an unknown human approach. We always used a special call, a high pitched squeak like a cheetah, whenever WE approached the cats, and this way they could easily tell us apart from all other people.”

Gradually making it past these educational milestones and exhibiting a great deal of patience, Simon was able to teach the cubs the essentials cheetahs need to live a life in the wild. A fierce education and a huge accomplishment for both the cheetahs and their surrogate “mom” — Simon.