Our Beautyful Boy Robin
Robin was born July 24th, 2012 at DeWildt Cheetah Center. He will be four this year. Born almost completely blind with beautiful black eyes and a black tip on his tail, Robin is very photogenic and rarely takes a bad picture.
Learn more about the DeWildt Cheetah Center: http://dewildt.co.za/
Robin is listed in the 2012 CCF Cheetah Studbook. Learn more about the CCF and the Cheetah Studbook: https://cheetah.org/research/by-type/international-studbooks/
Robin was named by the DeWildt facility before we received him. He was a last minute change in plans as we had planned to purchase Annie and her sister.
Robin had a different upbringing than most cheetahs from DeWildt. He is the son of Byron, Africa’s most famous Ambassador Cheetahs who has been seen by over 150,000 school children. He was born and raised with his mother on Ann Van Dyk’s farm. Here is a photo of Robin’s dad.
Byron has his own Facebook page. He is retired now and living the easy life in Africa. You can also find him on the DeWildt Ambassador page:
http://dewildt.co.za/our-ambassadors/
Robin is a very sweet boy by nature. He is a true couch potato and is never more comfortable than when he is in a nice warm bed. Because of his disabilities, Robin tends to get nervous quickly. One thing that will upset him quickly is strong winds. Most animals that depend on hearing get nervous in high wind situations and Robin is even more attuned to that. In the wild, animals that depend on hearing tend to “go to ground” until the wind calms down. Robin also does the famous cheetah “grab and bite” more than most cheetahs. We tend to believe once again that this is because of his lack of sight. You can see 3 videos of various cheetah attacks (mild, normal, hot) in our photo and video section. Cheetahs aren’t very good at attacking people and quite often people are left wondering what’s happening. They do have sharp dew claws that can puncture and do occasionally bite hard enough to puncture skin. It is physically impossible for a cheetah to kill a human unless a person is completely submissive but Robin still occasionally unnerves guests. Picture a house cat that occasionally grabs your leg with its front paws and tries to bite. Cheetahs are also very “directed” when they go into this type of attack mode which means they completely ignore everyone else around them. If you watch the three videos you can see that the cheetahs in each one ignore the people redirecting them.
Robin was born with significant medical challenges. These are due to the cheetah’s lack of genetic diversity.
He was born almost completely blind. He can see objects at a distance away, but nothing close up. There is a problem transferring light signals to his brain and his pupils are constantly dilated which gives him incredibly beautiful black eyes. This condition is not progressive or painful.
Robin also has gastritis. He has a completely different diet than Annie and is fed only beef which he seems to tolerate best. He is only fed once a day with a large feeding as he seems to have a problems shutting off his acid production in his stomach which causes him to vomit if he is only fed small amounts of food. He is also fed a customised combination of vitamins and minerals.
Most dangerous is his enlarged heart. One side of his heart if 50% larger than the other. We are careful not to do things that cause his heart to have to work hard.
He also has slight neurological problems. He occasionally has symptoms we refer to “typewriter head” where he moves his head side to side in an odd motion. He also occasionally exhibits “helicopter motion” by turning repeating in tight circles.
See more of Robin in our video and photo section