A team of eight keepers at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park is caring for a pair of newborn cheetah cubs after their mother abandoned them.
The cubs, born Nov. 19, are being bottle fed with a special formula and closely monitored.
The cheetah sisters don’t have names yet, but staff call them “Yellow” and “Purple” because of the colors of temporary ID markings put on their tails.
At four weeks old, the pair will start to receive solid food, and at 70 days they will be weaned from the special cheetah formula.
Guests visiting the Safari Park this month can see the cheetahs in their nursery at the Nairobi Station between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m.
San Diego Zoo Global has been breeding cheetahs for more than 40 years, with more than 150 cubs born, and is part of the cheetah Breeding Center Coalition. There are only 10,000 cheetahs in the world today, with about 10 percent living in zoos or wildlife parks.