Cheetah has been moved to Gunma Safari Park.
June 12, 2026
Two male Cheetah, Kevin and Damian, who were kept at Tama Zoo, were transferred to Gunma Safari Park on May 13, 2025. The brothers arrived at the park in 2023 from Lee G. Simmons Wild Safari Park in Nebraska, USA.
Kevin and Damian are individuals with high breeding priority within the country. One of the reasons for their relocation is that when we introduced them to females at our zoo and kept them together, they showed no interest in the females when they went into heat.
Compatibility between males and females is crucial for Cheetah breeding; if they are incompatible, they may show no interest in each other, as happened with Kevin and Damian, or they may even fight.
For example, Ibuki (male), who is kept at our zoo, responds quite well to Dura (female)'s estrus, but shows little interest in anyone other than Dura. There are several females at Gunma Safari Park, and we decided to move Kevin and Damian there with the hope that they might be able to breed if they meet a compatible female.
When moving animals, they are almost always placed in boxes (called "transport boxes") for transport. The boxes need to be the appropriate size and strength for each animal, and the boxes used for this move were made of iron and measured 70 cm wide x 124 cm long x 105 cm high. They weighed about 200 kg each, and it took four staff members to carry two of them into the animal enclosure.
As preparation for the move, we train Cheetah to get used to the box so that they will enter on their own. In most cases, on the first day they won't go near it at all, or if they do go in, it will only be with their front paws. Therefore, we gradually get them used to it by putting food inside the box and guiding them in.
This time, we started training a month ago. On the first day of training, both Kevin and Damian seemed quite wary at first, but when we dropped some meat into the box while they were looking inside, half of them immediately went into the box. As we gradually guided them in while calling their names, they seemed less wary and went in whole, staying inside the box until the end of the training and receiving their food.
From the next day onward, when we called them while showing them the meat, they would immediately go into the box and seemed calm. On the day of the move, they each got into the box on their own, and we were able to safely deliver both of them to Gunma Safari Park.
A female hamster named "Clarice" was transferred from our zoo to Gunma Safari Park in 2018 and bred there in 2022. We hope that Kevin and Damian will also meet new females and do their best to live up to expectations.
[Tama Zoo, Tama Zoological Park]