Gorgeous cheetah cubs born after third ever caesarean

AP

Two beautiful cheetah cubs are being hand-raised at the Smithsonian National Zoo in Washington after a risky birth last month.

The zoo gave a first peek of the month-old cubs on Wednesday this week, and they're looking super-healthy after a worrying start.

AP

Their five-year-old mother Ally gave birth at the end of April and abandoned her first cub in the snow, before her labour stopped with three cubs still waiting to be born.

Zoo vets decided to perform a "rare and risky" emergency caesarean and saved one more cub, along with the mother. Two other cubs died in the process.

AP

Both cubs and the mother were in intensive care for three days, and now the male that was abandoned and the female born by caesarean are being hand-reared.

Vet Copper Aitken-Palmer told the Washington Post: "You're always sad that you couldn't save them all, but I'm thrilled that we have two, and I'm thrilled that the mum is doing well, too."

The cubs have been eager to drink their milk, and are now graduating to solid food.

AP

Zoo vets said they only knew of two other cheetah C-section cases, in which one was successful and the other was not.

Cheetah biologist Adrienne Crosier said: "It's very rare and it's very risky. We were certainly concerned about the welfare of the mother."

AP

Cheetahs are now an endangered species, and it is estimated there are only 8,000 to 12,000 left in the wild, according to Crosier.

She added that North American zoos are trying to build a self-sustaining population, describing every cub as "critical", but that they were only producing a "fraction of the cubs we need every year to become sustainable".

See more stunning endangered predators here:

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