1972 Cheetah

Photo: Zdeněk Veselovský, Prague Zoo

One of the first to be bred in the world

The first cheetah to be admired by Prague Zoo’s visitors was called Mignon and came to the zoo in 1933 from the Kludský Circus. Over the years other cheetahs appeared, but it wasn’t until the seventies that they were successfully bred.

Getting these African carnivores to breed in captivity had long met with rather patchy success. This was due to the fact that their family life in the wild remained shrouded in mystery. In 1972, Prague Zoo became the first zoo in the then Czechoslovakia and only the third in the world to successfully breed them.

At the end of the Sixties and start of the Seventies, the zoo had a male, Bango, and two females, Čita and Brita. The latter started the breeding programme when she gave birth to triplets in April – immediately proving to be an exemplary mother. The two males and the female were named Ares, Akis and Aisa and were the first of twenty-seven offspring that Brita was to bring into the world.