Another cheetah dies at Kuno National Park, eighth death in two months

Another cheetah died at Madhya Pradesh's Kuno National Park (KNP) on Friday, the eighth in two months.

Male Namibian cheetah Suraj was found lying unconscious and died during the treatment on Friday, Forest Department officials said.

Officials said the exact reason of semi-adult cheetah Suraj's death could only be ascertained after the post-mortem report.

This is the eighth cheetah death at KNP in the span of four months, and came days after South African cheetah Tejas died on Tuesday and whose autopsy reports have already raised many questions.

The reports has revealed that cheetah was underweight and his internal body parts had been weakened. "Possibly because of being internally weak, Tejas was unable to recover from the trauma after the violent clash with a female cheetah," according to the autopsy report.

In May, three cubs, out of four borne to a Namibian cheetah named Siyaya, died within a week of their birth due to heat, dehydration, and weakness. However, the fourth cub luckily survived.

Before this, Namibian cheetah Sasha died of kidney-related problems in March and in April, South African cheetah Uday died due to cardiac failure.

Just weeks later, South African cheetah Daksha died after a violent encounter with male cheetahs during a territorial fight.

A total 20 cheetahs were introduced at KNP in two phases. In the first phase, eight cheetahs were translocated from Namibia and they were released by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on September 17 last year. In the second phase, 12 cheetahs were brought from South Africa on February 18.