A young cheetah and a Labrador-mix dog chase, tumble and wrestle across fresh snow in this December 2013 clip from the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden. The cheetah is Savanna, the dog is Max, and they had been growing up together since they were both babies.
Max and Savanna: how the friendship began
Savanna is an African cheetah born on 22 June 2012 at the Cincinnati Zoo's Regional Cheetah Breeding Facility in Clermont County, Ohio. Her mother, Lucy, was a first-time mother who could not care for her properly, so nursery keepers hand-raised the cub, bottle-feeding her six times a day, roughly every two and a half hours.
On 4 September 2012 Savanna moved into the zoo's Cat Ambassador Program, where she would train to become one of its running cheetahs. The next day, 5 September, she met Max, a 13-week-old Labrador-mix puppy. The zoo announced the new pair a week later under the headline "Cheetah Cub & Puppy Pals".
The snow video from December 2013
By the time the zoo filmed them in the snow, Savanna was about 18 months old and Max was well over a year old. In the cheetah yard the two take turns chasing each other, crash together and break apart again, with the snow showing every swerve and sprint. The video, posted by the zoo on YouTube, was picked up by sites such as Laughing Squid on 13 December 2013.
Why zoos pair cheetahs with dogs
Cheetahs raised without littermates miss out on the rough-and-tumble play that siblings provide. A companion dog fills that role. The dog becomes a surrogate sibling, and it lets the cheetah jump, wrestle and play rough in ways the keepers do not want directed at people as the cat grows up. According to the zoo, the dog's personality matters far more than its breed.
Cincinnati has long experience with these partnerships. Its first cheetah–dog duo began in 1981, when Angel, the zoo's first ambassador cheetah, was paired with Dominic, a Great Dane. Later pairs included Sara and Lexi, Tommy T and Pow Wow, Donni and Moose, Kris and Remus, and Nia and Cali, with Max and Savanna among the program's successful pairings.
What happened to Max and Savanna
When the zoo introduced them, it said the two would stay together "until one of them decides they are no longer interested." That day came on 8 April 2014, when they had a final play session. Savanna had outgrown her canine friend; as Alicia Sampson of the Cat Ambassador Program put it to FOX19, the cheetah "would rather stalk and try to eat giraffes" than play with her dog. Max went home with a zoo employee to live on a farm with the employee's family.
Cheetah facts
- Speed: reliably measured sprints of around 100 to 104 km/h (62 to 65 mph). An 11-year-old Cincinnati Zoo cheetah was clocked at 98 km/h (61 mph).
- Size: adults weigh about 21 to 65 kg.
- Status: listed as Vulnerable by the IUCN, with about 6,500 mature cheetahs counted in the wild in 2021.
- Range: scattered populations in Africa and a small remnant in central Iran; cheetahs now hold only about 9% of their former African range.
Explore more: why captive tigers are not domestic cats; pet behaviour in a short film.
Related reading
- Ginzey’s Shortcut Through a Backyard Snow Maze
- An Unexpected Dog Encounter: Dean MacDonald’s Candid Winter Clip
- Chaya the German Shepherd Joins the Snow Shovelling
Sources
- Cincinnati Zoo: Cheetah Cub & Puppy Pals (September 2012)
- Cincinnati Zoo: A Cat’s Best Friend
- FOX19: Zoo's dog and cheetah have final play session
- Laughing Squid: Savanna the Cheetah and Max the Dog Play in the Snow
- Wikipedia: Cheetah
- Video and still: Cheetah Savanna and Dog Max Play in Snow - Cincinnati Zoo (Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden on YouTube)
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