It's Raining Spotted Dogs

I wrote a few blogs at the beginning of the year about the Giant Panda and how it was becoming extinct. I think I also wrote about two other species but they were not extinct, I think one was invasive, but still that is a bit off topic. There are many factors that contributed to the current species that have become endangered; for instance a lot of them are very specific breeders, and so when more and more of them started to disappear, it became even harder to find mates to breed with. I found an article on Yahoo about a zoo that is trying to combat the extremely selective breeding of cheetahs but using dogs. (yes I said dogs)

In a zoo in Los Angeles, there live 19 cheetahs. Four of which have dogs. ….whoa. dogs? Yeah. Dogs. Did you know cheetahs are just big skittish, scaredy-cats? Well, they are. And these dogs help the kitties become more confident. The cats are in danger of becoming extinct because they aren’t breeding as most animals do and they don’t socialize very much. Big breeds of dogs are setting an example for the cats. Most, if not all, dog breeds are very territorial. They stand up for what they want-hold their ground. By introducing these animals, for years, some cheetah enclosures and zoos have therapeutically coaxed cheetahs out of their shells. Cool, huh? I think so. The dogs protect and reassure their cats.

The dogs don’t live with the cheetahs but they spend a lot of time with them. The sleep separately at night and feeding is always separate. Not for the reason you may think though. You may be formulating speculations that the cats might just be taken over by instinct and attack the dog but really, the result isn’t like that. The result you would find is fat dogs and starving cats. Yeah, right. Right? Well the cats are scared. And the dogs keep their ground so the cats’ steak dinner would just be stolen by the dogs. And the dogs regular puppy chow-just left sitting there. I mean, if the dog had his way. (357)