BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) - A 13-year-old cheetah and her two-year-old daughter from the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden in Cincinnati, Ohio, are the newest exhibit at the Baton Rouge Zoo.
Zoo officials who announced the arrival of the pair said that cheetahs are the fastest land mammal on the planet, reaching speeds of up to 70 mph, and also are considered the most sociable of the big cats.
Identified as vulnerable on the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources "red list," the biggest identified threats to the big cats in the wild include competition for food sources from other successful African carnivores.