Animal Planet: Growing Up Cheetah

[Sycorax]

Anyone else see this first installment of the series? I was disappointed, and I’m not sure why. I love animals and watch anything having to do with the preservation of wild animals, but I was dissatisfied with this episode. For one thing, I had a lot of trouble understanding Nadine (I think that was her name) - the woman who hand-raised the cheetah cubs; I guess she had a South African accent, but much of what she said was lost on me. The whole episode seemed, oh, choppy, I guess is the word; didn’t focus on any one aspect long enough, and I didn’t understand at first why they had to take the cubs away from the Mom only 10 days after they were born. After staying with it for 40 minutes or so, I assumed it was because they wanted to “tame” the newborns as much as is possible with a wild animal so they could tag them and introduce them to another colony. Even so, I thought they should have spent more time on that aspect – why they had to do that, and the benefits for both the animals and humans. I plan to watch the next episode (Growing up Marsupial), but I hope it’s more satisfying than the first.