Photographed by Tambako the Jaguar

Another picture of the mother cheetah and again licking her nose, I already got a few such pictures during previous visits but I like her eyes on this shot.

Picture taken in the zoo of Basel.

– License

by Ellen Brandt, Ph.D.

Many of those in my now-loyal audience first became acquainted with my work by supporting me in the Community Marketing site’s Great Blog-Off contest a few months ago. A number of people have asked me to write a little case study about my (overwhelming) win in that test, which illustrates some basic principles everyone who writes for the Internet should keep in mind: Hook ‘Em With Headlines. Keep ‘Em There With Links. And Remember You’re Only As Strong As Your Fan Base.

I’ve been a heavy-volume print journalist most of my working life. But after a several-year sabbatical from the field, I returned to find the world of magazines in disarray, Big Media under fire from Little Media, and the Internet emerging as the place where a busy and educated audience of professionals tended to go for both news and features.

I was also dismayed to find that the current dominance of a few major search engines tends to exclude from Internet visibility anything written prior to 18 months ago or so. Magazines are particularly poorly represented. So the more than 3,000 print magazine articles I’d published over a 30-year period were virtually inaccessible, in Internet terms. I was suddenly a journalistic ghost, while Buffy the Siamese Cat, with 14,000 Twitter “publications,” was now a media superstar.

What to do? Well, with the help of my cousin the Internet guru, I first scanned in a selection of about 50 of my magazine articles and placed them in a little virtual portfolio on the Web. Then I wrote a couple of articles for Internet “aggregators,” but soon decided they were pretty much pimps, and I was a lady, not a Lady of the Night.

So I decided to create a Web presence of my own by publishing and administering my own blogsites and developing an audience in the Brave New Blogosphere. While this idea was germinating, I heard about the Great Blog-Off contest at a website called Community Marketing.

Marketing is not my area of expertise, although I’ve done a few stories on it over the years. (I’ve probably done a few stories on everything over the years.) But this contest was not designed for marketing writers only. It welcomed all bloggers who professed to be “thought leaders” on any kind of subject matter. I had been contemplating starting my Baby Boomers-The Angriest Generation series, which most of you now know about. (See the latest Index at http://wp.me/pxD3J-2a )

I signed up for the contest, describing myself as a “thought leader” on the subject of Baby Boomers. The owner of the site asked contestants – there were a couple of dozen originally, although some turned out to be not very active – to come up with punchy little descriptions of themselves, a few words that would make us memorable. I offered the following:

Dr. Ellen Brandt – “Sophisticated Rabble Rouser”

About my professional background: I’m an Ivy League-educated Ph.D. cultural historian and the author of over 3,000 magazine articles. I’m now a professional in the senior services industry – the fastest-growing sector of this economy for the next 100 years or so – while also resuming my career as a heavy-volume journalist.

When I’m not working: I’m a mezzo soprano trained at Juilliard Prep when it was at 123rd and Claremont. I like lighthouses, carousels, and botanical gardens. And my Dog-Nephew Garcia, named after Jerry Garcia, was – honestly! – the inspiration for the Obamas getting a Portuguese water dog.

My Pre-Blog-Off Blogsite

Said punchy blurb was accompanied by a photo and the notation that I would be the contestant representing Boomers among a field of mostly Gen-Xers and Millennials.

The punchy blurbs were posted about ten days before the contest proper was to begin, at which time I contemplated what kind of strategy might set me apart from the field, help win me a loyal audience, and address the essential differences between a static print environment and this dynamic sphere which calls itself the Internet.

I decided to establish a “pre-blog-off blog” at WordPress, where I now house the blogs I publish. The site was called “Preparing for the Blog-Off” with the subheading “Seeing What Works.”

It basically consisted of the same page repeated ten times with different headlines. More about the headlines in a second. The main purpose of the page was to introduce readers to the Blog-Off, with an easy link to the contest embedded in the text.

I also said a little bit about my background and stated that I would be the contestant representing Content and Experience, as befitted a Baby Boomer. On the blogsite’s About page, I offered further links to my Linked In profile, about 50 examples of my print magazine articles, and a wide-ranging interview about my career. (See Why This Blog at http://wp.me/sycK6-about )

This adds up to a whole lot of links! Which illustrates one of those three principles successful website owners should keep in mind: Don’t keep your Readers on one static page, in which case they might as well be sitting at their kitchen table reading a newspaper. Keep your audience moving swiftly from link to link, offering them choices of what to read about next. Make your site a textual Treasure Hunt, with riches galore opening before their eyes.

Now For Those Headlines . . .

All I needed now was an interesting topic for the site, broad enough to warrant several blog entries over the two-week period of the contest, and compelling enough to attract a brand-new audience previously unfamiliar with my work.

The Blog-Off winner would be the contestant who attracted both the most comments and the most clicks – or page views – on the Community Marketing site. So I conceived the idea of a series of stories about attracting both page views and comments via the strength of one’s article headlines.

The series would be called “Thank You For Clicking!” and would be based on the experience early in my career within the world of those Headline Hotshots, the tabloid newspapers. (See “In An Economy and World Gone Haywire” http://wp.me/pycK6-v )

No one does headlines better than the tabloids. Their titles may amuse you, intrigue you, infuriate you, or have you scratching your head – but they are superb at drawing you in and getting you to read the accompanying stories.

Looking at this exercise as informative, as well as fun, I decided to use ten Faux Tabloid Headlines representing different kinds of typical tabloid stories, which I categorized as The Big Story, Plausible-But-Off, Purely Ridiculous, and What-the-Heck-Is-That-About? You can read about these tabloid story categories – and I certainly hope you will – in the four-part series of blogs which made up my composite entry in the Blog-Off.

Here are the ten Faux Tabloid Headlines:

Corpse Found in Internet Guru’s Gym Locker

Pet Hamsters May Spread Swine Flu

Each of these headlines was placed on a separate page at the “Preparing For the Blog-Off” site at Word Press, with the exact same text accompanying each one. In other words, the only element that differed page-to-page was the headline itself. A reader’s clicking on any particular page instead of another would demonstrate that the headline on that page attracted that reader in some way. I also encouraged readers to comment on why they clicked on that particular headline.

Please click on this link to see what the “Preparing For the Blog-Off” page looked like: http://wp.me/pycK6-2h I have used “7 Out of 10 Blog in the Nude” as an example.

Finding Your Fan Base

At this point I needed an audience to read my Blog-Off entries. Several of the younger entrants in the contest publically stated they’d be concentrating on their Twitter networks as potential bases of fans. But I wasn’t on Twitter yet, nor was I active on Face Book.

So I decided to focus my efforts on my Linked In network – considerably smaller then than it is now – and my 50 Linked In groups.

Starting about two weeks before the Blog-Off’s official commencement, I began to post each of the ten Faux Tabloid Headlines in turn, with a link to the appropriate “Preparing” site page, first in the News sections, then in the Discussion sections, of my various Linked In Groups. I made sure each of the ten Faux Headlines appeared in News and Discussion threads an equal number of times, meaning that an approximately equal number of site visitors would have the opportunity to click – or not click – on each distinctive headline.

Readers who did choose to click were encouraged to make comments about why they chose the headline they did. Many got into the spirit of this exercise and made comments which were sophisticated, insightful, and often quite funny.

It was also soon very clear who my own “fan base” tended to be: over-35; equally divided between female and male; well-educated; and with professional, managerial, or creative careers.

I’m quite happy with that audience. And, in fact, many of those who first “found” me and my work via the Blog-Off are now friends and members of my network.

A quick note about my Baby Boomers series: I intended to introduce the first of my Baby Boomers-The Angriest Generation articles towards the end of the Blog-Off contest. But I collected so much material from the Faux Tabloid Headlines exercise – most of which turned out to be genuinely interesting, as well as humorous – I decided to stick with that “mini-series,” consisting of four separate “Thank You For Clicking!” stories, as my composite Blog-Off entry.

Here are links to the four stories in the series:

Thank You For Clicking! Part One: Corpse Found In Internet Guru’s Gym Locker

Thank You For Clicking! Part Four: New Reality Show To Feature Laid-Off Bankers, Lawyers

I urge you to read these stories in sequence, after looking at the Introductory page from the “Preparing For the Blog-Off” site, linked above.

This sequence of four Thank You For Clicking! results articles made up my Blog-Off entry. They were posted on the Community Marketing site at about three-day intervals over the two-week course of the contest. Other active competitors also posted about four stories on average, with three to five blogs being the typical range per contestant.

When the results were tallied, my articles garnered about twice as many page views on the Community Marketing site as my nearest competitor. But the number of page views on the “Preparing for the Blog-Off” site itself was over double that amount, meaning my total views overall, counting both sites, was between six and seven times as great as the next-nearest contestant.

Tell Me What You Think

The series of Thank You For Clicking! stories also did extremely well in terms of reader commentary, which I believe is one of the essential components of successful Internet-based publishing.

Internet gurus tell us that a comment-to-click ratio of 1-2 percent is the average among publishers across the Web. Adding together the approximately 200 comments the Thank You! series received at the Community Marketing site, my Linked In Groups, and the “Preparing For the Blog-Off” site, these articles had a comment-to-click ratio of almost 4 percent, considered an excellent showing.

The comment-to-page view ratio on the “Preparing” site alone, where I – and not other managers – had complete control of the blog and its content was similar, with close to 100 comments from readers, out of 2700 page views in a three-week period.

I am including a selection of original Reader comments from the Community Marketing site and the “Preparing” blogsite as an appendix to this case study. To see them, please click here:

The superb reader response demonstrates how enthusiastic – and witty – an audience I was fortunate enough to make an acquaintance with during the course of the Blog Off contest.

There were a few detractors. If you’ve read my serious humor piece about malice on the Web, you’ll remember a small cadre of loonies at a couple of Linked In media groups – including a PR man! – who thought anything whatsoever to do with tabloids was just too undignified for Internet discourse. (See “Vultures and Stiletto Heels” http://wp.me/pycK6-5 )

But most readers loved the premise of the Faux Tabloid Headline experiment and understood that it was not only entertaining, but also told us some interesting things about which kinds of headlines readers respond to viscerally and why.

Even coming from a heavy-volume print background, it was essential for me – as it is for every writer and publisher – to discover just who my Internet “fan base” might be and how I could best appeal to them in future Web publications.

My gratifying win in the Blog-Off contest allowed me to do that.

Soon afterwards, I launched my Baby Boomers-The Angriest Generation series. ( xxxxxxxx ) And “Tell Me What You Think,” a catch phrase I used throughout the Blog-Off, became the subtitle of my EllenInteractive site, a cornucopia of diverse stories designed to elicit above-average reader response. (For instance, see “The World is Divided,” a key question story which received well over 100 comments: http://wp.me/pycK6-n )

I’m now moving on to additional Internet publishing projects:

Media Revolution, a subseries of EllenInteractive, talks about how the entire media sector is undergoing a sea change of enormous proportions and how we must prepare for it. (See “Is Big Brother Here-And Is He An Algorithm?” http://wp.me/pycK6-1Y )

Romance After Fifty is a series on dating and relationships I’m developing with a Baby Boomer matchmaker. (See “A Chance for Romance” http://wp.me/pxD3J-R )

A Little Knowledge will look at Internet security and cloud computing from the perspective of an audience which is well-educated and has used computers for years, but which lacks information on some of the serious recent developments that are changing the Web as we speak.

And The Rest of US - pun intended – is a new blogsite I’m launching about and for political Centrists.

So there have been many interesting developments built upon the foundation of my Blog-Off win.

I invite my brilliant, sophisticated, and in-every-way-perfect audience to join with me in these new projects and others to come.

Any success I have is due to you!

Photographed by Tambako the Jaguar

First picture of a long series of cheetah pics : a portrait of the mother of the zoo of Basel taken from profile and looking serious and proud like cheetahs do it so well.

– License

I cant believe how quickly the months seem to fly by and that we are approaching the end of 2009! The “Free Desktop Backgrounds” have proven to be a hit with regular downloads each week. Thanks for all the support! As always, if you would like to download the file, simply click on the image and then select the “download” button when the image opens in the Box.net window.

The first image is of a Southern Tree Agama ( Acanthocercus atricollis ) which was taken in the Kruger National Park in August.

The males of this species tend to be larger than the females and develop brighter breeding coloration. Although well established hierarchies keep fighting to a minimum, rival males can engage in savage battles.

This second image was taken in the Tswalu Kalahari Reserve. These two sub-adult cheetah were approaching their mother who was feeding on a fresh kill. Their posture and focus adds an element of excitement to the image whilst the textures of the grasses in the background and foreground ensure that they remain the key component of the image.

We are always looking for feedback and constructive criticism so please feel free to contact us:

info@moyawatenga.co.za

www.moyawatenga.co.za

A family safari is such a great way to spend time together and is excellent therapy for everyone!

An area of history and legend, offers some of the most excitinggame viewing in Africa. It is a place of exceptional beauty where one can explore therugged, unspoilt African landscapes either in the comfort of open 4-wheel drive vehicles,on a walking safari, on mountain bicycles, or horse back, guided by expert rangers and experienced trackers. In addition to the game experience, Mashatu offers a view ofAfrica, unchanged since the days of early visitors such as Kipling, Selous and artist/explorer Sir Thomas Baines. Historic and archaeological sites abound; notable are the Motloutse Ruins and the Pitsani Koppie sites.

The excitement of Mashatu has not changed over time. It is still home to large herds of elephant, prides of lion and cheetah. Along the river courses, huge Mashatu trees provide shade for eland, impala, wildebeest, giraffe and zebra, whilst at night, the bateared fox, African Wildcat and the magnificent leopard search for prey. Some 366 species of birds may be seen. Mashatu Game Reserve proudly provides a refuge for the largest, single population of elephant on privately owned land in Africa. Known as the relic herds of Shashe, these elephants are the last living testament to the great herds that once populated the meandering Limpopo valley. Today, the population on Mashatu Game Reserve alone, is estimated to number in excess of 500.

Source: Nature & Kind Travel Collection

Walking wild in Laikipiak Maasai-land is a walking safari holiday through on of Kenya’s best wildlife viewing habitats: the Lewa Conservancy.

Combined with the two Maasai Community Conservation areas of Il Ngwesi and Lekurruki, these three areas provide some of the most stunning landscapes in Africa. This area is home to a wide variety of game including the Big Five and over 420 species of bird. This safari is supported by camels, that can be ridden if the terrain allows.

Source: Nature & Kind Travel Collection

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The De Wildt Cheetah and Wildlife Centre has featured in some of my previous posts. This is an update to spread the word about it’s name change to The Ann van Dyk Cheetah Centre, which has taken place in honour of Ann, who’s dedicated over 40 years of her life to this precious cause, and still works full-time at the centre.

Close to Johannesburg, it’s a stunning venue to visit, for phenomenal tours or a getaway to a fabulous lodge. You can learn an immense amount about a variety of creatures, including endangered cheetah and wild dogs, as well as witness a high-speed cheetah run – not to be missed!

For more information, or to book a tour, visit www.dewildt.co.za.

Here’s a photo that Dave took of a cheetah family at the Masai Mara in Kenya – especially for those who may never have met these amazing cats

CHEETAH FAMILY - Masai Mara, Kenya

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This dream started out with me on an airplane, and we were just reaching our destination.
Upon our descent, most of the people on the plane started to get airsick (and if you know me, I’m the type of person who can’t STAND to see, hear, smell, etc. ANYone vomiting.  It is extremely disturbing to me).  Once the plane landed, I rushed off of it to get away from these people.

We had landed in the middle of a wide, open plain.  I can’t say for sure, but I’m guessing it was Africa, and you’ll see why in a second.
We were all of the same group, and we began to walk towards the edge of a cliff (which wasn’t too much of a cliff–it had a slope downwards that was fairly steep, but we were still able to climb down it).  We were walking, and then we came upon a giraffe.  I started yelling at everyone to go AROUND the giraffe rather than near it, because they are actually quite dangerous, but nobody listened to me.  The giraffe then proceeded to swing it’s head at people and hit them with its two bony horns (which, I recall from watching National Geographic the other night, is how giraffes fight amongst each other in real life).
In an “I told you so” manner, I began to climb down the slope with a few other people.

Once at the bottom of the slope, we were on a second plain, and then we got into a truck.  Most of us were in the bed of the truck, because there wasn’t much room in the cab, of course.  as we were driving, a cheetah started to attack us–it was jumping so high that it was above the bed of the truck, and trying to jump into it.
I, for some reason, had some sort of a club or a baseball bat, and I hit it to fend it off, which worked.

A little while later, we got out of the truck, and started walking….and then some male lions started chasing after us.
We ran as fast as we could, and eventually someone saw a beach, and yelled “head towards the water!  They’re cats, so they don’t like to swim!!”, and so we did just that…and it actually worked.
The lions didn’t follow us into the water, and after about 5 minutes, they got bored with waiting for us to come out of the water, and wandered off.

In a second part of the dream, I was taking pictures of fiddler crabs on the shore.
Then, it switched to a scene where I was still in this Africa-type place, but I was conducting an interview for the teacher of an elementary school.  The interview was being held on the playground of the school, and the person that I was interviewing for the position was messing with a piece of fabric on the sand for some reason….after a few minutes, this all changed–I was the interviewee, and the woman was the one who was interviewing me.
The interview concluded, and at about the same time, a male teacher came up to the interviewers, who were his superiors, and told them that, from now on, he would like to be addressed as Mr. 33702 (or a number similar to this–I know that the first two digits were 3s, but I can’t remember the last 3 digits), which was his zip code.  I made a joke that he was definitely not the only one in that zip code, and that there must have been hundreds of other “Mr. 33702″s, but he ignored me.

The dream then changed again, and I was still in this Africa-like area, but this time, I was a senior in high school again.  I took a few different artsy classes (which makes sense, since, in real life, I’m a photographer and all-around artist), and in one class, I won a contest where the prize was to pick one of a variety of corsets.  I chose one that was all-white, had a lacy pattern, and was very elegant and feminine.  Then that class ended, and I ran into a friend (a friend who I actually DO know in real life, but whom I haven’t seen or talked to in a few years, and she just happened to be in the dream), and she was very hysteric, going on about how she thought she might be pregnant.  I was telling her that she shouldn’t worry, because the only reason why she thought this was because she was a day late on her period, and she hadn’t even taken a pregnancy test yet, but it didn’t calm her down.

Which was when I woke up.

We also saw a jaguar but he was so stressed about the whole cage thing he just kept going back and forth and back and forth behind the bars so I was never able to get a good photo of him. He didn’t look happy at all and it made us all quite sad. I didn’t get any photos of my favourite wild animal in the whole world – the  lynxes either. They were sleeping but a bit too far away and my camera don’t reach that far (that’s why I wish for a new camera ) but they looked very cute and cuddly and I think I asked boyfriend to give me one for my big 25:th coming up soon like a hundred times. He said I’d get one. He also said I’d get a tiger, a lion baby, some monkeys, a zebra, and that I could have a giraffe down on the street and it could reach up with it’s tall neck to our balcony on the fifth floor. We’ll have to keep the zebra in somebody other’s apartment of course – otherwise the tiger and the lion will eat it. I even suggested that me and Linda (my special lady friend) could have shared custody over a tiger. I think it’s very clever. That way we can repair everything he’s destroyed (chewed furniture, limbs) one week and let him come over the next.

Yesterday, me, boyfriend and some other loose folks went to the Munich Zoo.

More pics to come!

This story is so very old that the only witnesses are dust and ashes long ago. In those days, the first men  that walked upright shared the Okavango, and, as they were new to the area, seeing a cheetah trapping a prey was a wonderful show to them.
The Cheetah were then much more robust than today, they had the classic belly of the big cat and he was so much alike their cousins the leopards, which was very easy to mix up, but man, that young and strange animal, for some reason, he preferred them .
One afternoon when Cheetah devoured the remains of a gazelle, one of those strange animals newcomers, the men, he said with admiration:
- What a beautiful race you’ve done, Cheetah, you certainly deserve to enjoy that delicious gazelle!
Cheetah was a little confused. What did the newcomer say? Cheetah had done nothing that leopards, lions and hyenas do not do every day: get their food.
“It’s nothing,” growled Cheetah, just hungry.
- Nothing! But if you ran like the wind! - the man flattered him.
Cheetah was very satisfied and that night when the herd was about to sleep, he told the story in detail.
The herd was as confused as him, but the next day, when the king of black hair  struck a young zebra and  roared hard to alienate the cheetah, one of them, in anger, replied:
“Do you know, Lion, that man has made it clear that no one runs after a prey so beautifully like us”.
And as animal love  gossips, in  a week or so , everyone around the Okavango knew that only  cheetah run like the wind to catch their prey.
The competition was unleashed. There was’nt a large cat that did not take his mornings to practice to the long runs and afternoon naps were abandoned as everyone strove to be the best runner.
However, there was no consensus. The leopards were convinced of being the best, the cheetah had in his favor with the testimony of men, but the Lions claimed to be the best and who could be so foolish to oppose them? Perhaps the lions were not good runners, but could anyone doubt  about how powerful were its claws and jaws?
So they turned to be simple.
“We will ask the man who decides – agreed feline families.
And that strange animal that moved on two legs, Man, came in, noted, come back and continued watching. Finally the man spoke:
“You are all good hunters. The lion is the most powerful, the leopard is the best climber, but surely only the cheetah runs like the wind.
The war was declared. Leopards failed to greet his cousins and lions immediately granted them the dubious honor of leading the pack of their favorite prey.
Now the cheetah not only needed to run to catch their prey, but mainly for his life from the fury of the lion.
One day the cheetah were more depressed than usual, The Nature managed to pass by. She stopped to observe the exercises of the cheetah  when they ran after an antelope  and when they began to rest, spoke up:
“Maybe I could teach you some things”.
As soon as they demanded her advice, as The  Nature made them a list of exercises needed to lengthen legs and tails, a diet to lose weight and a  piece of advise that nobody asked.
-Concentrate on short distances. With those legs, you would be good sprinters.
The cheetah understood little or nothing, but truth was that they were hungry and were tired of living besides hiding from lions. That morning began their workouts and lowered the amount of calories consumed daily.
Soon they had their stomach removed and had  long, powerful legs. From running, their backs had become a striking curved and the tail had developed long and powerful and served them as a stabilizing rudder in the race.
When the cheetah  felt sure of winning any competition, sent an emissary to challenge the lions and leopards.
-We will compete in the savanna, the first to catch an antelope is the winner, agreed to the cats. 
And they asked the man to be judge of the competition.
On the very  day, the leopard spent much of the day trying to catch an old wildebeest, until he finally gave up and climbed the nearest acacia to watch the developments.
The lion lay down to nap, but not before ordering the lionesses of his pack to take charge of dinner. Females planned an ambush and caught a big buffalo on which they toiled until he had left but  bones picked clean.
Man was boring. What a waste of time! “This was the least competitive I have ever seen!” he said. He was about to return to the village when  Cheetah came in. He was thin and their large padded paws were gliding over the grass like velvet.
“Wait, man, – he said, you owe me your opinion”. 
He sat at short distance until he saw a herd of Grant gazelles  to come closer. Cheetah stood against the wind not to be sniffed and fixed his eyes on an anaware, careless  gazelle   in there, boasting of being a good catch.
Suddenly he lunged forward and ran like a cloudscape towards its goal. The gazelle flew like a shadow, but the distance shortened untill  soon there was no way to avoid the meeting. A single blow and dinner was ready.
Man, admired, came over to where the Cheetah share his food with the rest of the family. Cautiously, he stayed at a safe distance and then said.
“Don’t know what you’ve done Cheetah, but now that your belly is gone, and your legs are longer, now you run like the wind and nobody can reach you”.
The Cheetah reported throughout the Okavango the words of man, but they were very careful not to say that they were specialized in short races for the lion thought he could never catch them. So when after his run he’s out of breath on the grass, hiding so no one knows, he only reappears when he is able to breathe  again.   

Wie Macwelt.de gestern berichtete, gibt es erste Hinweise auf das zukünftige Mac-Betriebssystem Mac OS 10.7.

In der Raubkatzen-Reihe des beliebten Betriebssystemes gab es bisher “Cheetah” (10.0), ”Puma” (10.1), “Jaguar” (10.2), Panther® (10.3), Tiger® (10.4), Leopard® (10.5) und den aktuellen “Snow Leopard”® (10.6).

Wie wird wohl das OS X 10.7 heißen? Lion? Wenn die Markenrechte des bekannten Schokoriegel dadurch nicht verletzt werden, wäre dies eine durchaus denkbare Option. Auch “Sibirian Tiger” klingt nach Apple-Like. Lassen wir uns überraschen.

Die mit ® gekennzeichneten Namen sind eingetragene Marken von Apple. Quelle: Wikipedia.de

The Slurp

I think we like cheetahs so much because they act and look like big pussycats. They even purr, as I’m sure the kitten above was doing while he licked his mom. Though they are small and downright frail for a big cat, I always felt out-classed in the presence of a cheetah.

There are said to be about 12,400 cheetahs left on the planet. We saw a lot of them in the Masai Mara in Kenya and you never would have guessed they are endangered. The cheetahs that remain have a  surprisingly low genetic variation, suggesting they almost died off once before and they are all inbred. This makes them vulnerable to disease.

Cheetah Stake-out

We typically found cheetahs resting atop a termite mound, which they used for a vantage point on the flat savanna. They slept, they fidgeted. They did not seem to be paying much attention to their environment until suddenly the ears would go forward and the brow would furrow in that predator stare that I hope never to be on the receiving end of. In September in the Masai Mara the recipient of their attention was usually a newborn Thomson’s gazelle that had not kept quite hidden enough.

A cheetah can go from 0 to 64 mile per hour in three seconds, faster than most race cars. They can reach 70 mph in short bursts. Most chases require only about 40 mph and they can only maintain that for a few hundred yards before they overheat. The typically trip their prey with a front paw and then pounce on the tumbling animal for a neck bite. A mother with half-grown kittens may bring a baby gazelle back alive for the kittens to practice chasing and killing.

Masai Mara Cheetah

If the above cheetah seems to look a bit sheepish, it is because she had just tackled a seven month old wildebeest calf, only to have the mother wildebeest lower her horns and drive the cheetah away. She was a bit chagrined. I think she was showing off and a bit embarrassed that we saw that. Not sure why else she would tackle a calf that outweighed her by about one hundred pounds.

Tree Marking

The best part about the above photograph for me is the curious gazelles in the background. They just can’t seem to help themselves.

South African Paralympic runner Oscar Pistorius taking part in the Landsmót ungmennafélags Íslands, the largest sporting event in Iceland.

Sports engineers never seem to be that far away from a controversy. Just as one ‘issue’ is put to rest, you can be sure that a new hot potato is on the horizon. I’d argue that this is no bad thing; it is just a symptom of people’s natural resistance to change, and as long as sport continues to evolve, it’s probably in good health. Of far greater concern is the issue of stagnation, when nothing new is happening and your sport slowly but surely fades away into obscurity. The list of sports that were once in the Olympics but now only reside in amusing archive footage is surprisingly large. I am sure that in its day, underwater swimming was a highly competitive and exciting event, but can you really see it making a comeback anytime soon?

Perhaps the hottest of all sporting potatoes at the moment concerns the tricky case of athletes with a below the knee amputation and their use of Cheetah running blades. The name is quite unfortunate here as over the past year or so, the prosthetic has been unfairly linked to that most unsporting of notions, cheating. As controversies go, they don’t get much bigger than this. Prosthetics have the potential to challenge the accepted norms in sport, and this makes people feel anxious. It is therefore perhaps a little surprising that given my pre-amble and belief that change is generally a good thing, I too have my concerns about the future use of this particular piece of technology.

I have been fascinated by the use of running specific prosthetics ever since seeing Oscar Pistorius run on a rain drenched track in Sheffield in 2007. Even though this particular race was a bit of a disaster for Pistorius, he showed the world that disabled and non-disabled athletes are able to run together in the same race. A year later, I was very fortunate enough to be able to spend a week at the Paralympics in Beijing. There is something very remarkable about seeing a disabled athlete compete at the highest levels, and the majority view is that governing bodies should not create any barriers to stop disabled athletes competing against non-disabled athletes if they so desire. The exploits of these stellar individuals embodies the very best virtues of sport, and to suggest that there could be a problem seems unsporting to say the least. However, our desire to see disabled and non-disabled athletes competing together is primarily an emotive response, and when one digs a little deeper the issue becomes far less clear.

Last week, researchers from MIT published findings from their study on the use of running specific prostheses (Cheetah et al). As was reported in the Guardian and commented on by our very own Dr Simon Choppin, http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/nov/04/prosthetics-athletes-oscar-pistorius, this study adds further support to the view that the current use of prosthetics does not give disabled athletes an unfair advantage and that they should therefore be able to compete against their non-disabled counterparts. There have been two other studies that have considered this same question, and broadly speaking, the score now sits at two nil in favour of athletes like Pistorius. What are we all so worried about then?

At the moment the technology that disabled athletes use is unable to match the performance of conventional bones and muscle. Disabled athletes are not yet enhanced, but there is no reason why prosthetic technology should stop where it is. Powered ankle joints have already been prototyped and it is only a matter of time before far more capable prosthetics are used in sport. I think that this is an incredibly exciting time for disability sport. If we allow technological development to continue we will soon see disabled athletes out performing able-bodied athletes and the whole notion of disability will be challenged.

Strange as it may seem, perhaps the greatest threat to this enhanced future is the integration of disability sport with non-disability sport. Sports’ governing bodies will only ever allow disabled athletes to complete alongside non-disabled athletes if their abilities are limited to what is deemed to be ‘normal’. It is inevitable that new rules and regulations will be introduced to limit the abilities of prosthetics at the point where the playing field has been levelled, and this will curb the huge potential of these devices. If prosthetics are allowed to develop within the context of disability sport there is no reason why their potential should be limited. Genuine enhancements could be made and aside from challenging perceptions of disability, this sporting future would create new technologies of huge benefit to the wider population. It would be profoundly wrong to not allow this development to take place, and although it goes against our instincts, keeping the disabled and the non-disabled apart in competition may be the best way to realise this future.

Cheetah 9x12" oil on canvasboard

I photographed this cheetah on an art workshop/safari to Kenya in 2004. Click to purchase here

First Light 12x16" oil on canvasboard

This handsome lion was laying in the grass as we drove up in time to see the first light of day hit his golden mane. Click to purchase here

suggested by Pachydom Elephant Decor

“Have you ever considered taking a trip to Africa? What would be your favorite thing to experience in such a country?”

Out of all the places I would like to travel to, Africa is probably number two on my list (Israel is number one). There are two things in Africa that I would love to do: go to Egypt and go on a safari.

Who honestly wouldn’t want to go to Egypt? The country sounds fascinating. I’d love to see the pyramids, the Great Sphinx, and the Valley of the Kings. Those are only the most-known attractions; I can only imagine what else there is to do and see in Egypt since I have not really looked into it before.

I’m not so sure that I really would want to go on an African safari. I mean, how fun does that really sound? Not very. Just kidding. My bedroom is African safari-themed for crying out loud! I would love to go on a safari. Seeing lions, cheetahs, leopards, rhinos, elephants, hippos, giraffes, zebras, gazelles, wildebeests, and so many other animals up close would be so cool. I really hope I get the chance to go on a safari one day. As cool as going to Egypt would be, going on a safari would be much cooler.

He aquí Nick Brandt, un fotógrafo de animales salvajes que hace que no los veamos solo como bruscas criaturas del mundo.

A mi parecer son fotos hermosas, que si bien no es su objetivo mostrarlas como “salvajes” hace que se vean como criaturas dominantes, dueñas de su territorio. Unas cuantas fotos, disfruten.

Vía | Adventure Graphs

For Nature and Scenic, we are meeting to discuss which images should be pulled into the portfolio for this class. Here are my submissions:

AJ

Member of the IUCN – International Union for the Conservation of Nature

A new report will guide the way forward for Cheetah and African Wild Dog conservation in South Africa. Carnivore conservationists will establish a Biodiversity Management Plan for these species based on this report, for submission to the Department of Water and Environmental Affairs. If accepted and signed by the Minister, it will become legislated, providing an enforceable means of achieving the plan’s outlined objectives.

Cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus) and Wild Dogs (Lycaon pictus) share similar biological traits and face similar threats. For this reason the decision was taken to coordinate their conservation. Both species are wide ranging and occur at naturally low densities, even in protected areas. Both are adversely affected by competition with other large predators, and both are declining in number, primarily due to persecution by humans.

The goal of this plan is therefore to improve the status of Cheetah and Wild Dogs within their historical range in South Africa, and the objectives are to:

• develop capacity in all aspects of Cheetah and Wild Dog conservation in South Africa;

• improve knowledge of the conservation biology of Cheetah and Wild Dogs across South Africa;

• develop and implement mechanisms for the transfer of information relevant to the conservation of Cheetah and Wild Dogs and ensure active stakeholder commitment;

• minimise and manage conflict and promote co-existence between Cheetah, Wild Dogs and people across South Africa;

• minimise adverse effects of existing land use patterns and promote practices conducive to the conservation of Cheetah and Wild Dogs;

• improve national and provincial governmental commitment to the conservation of Cheetah and Wild Dogs in South Africa;

• review, and where necessary amend international, regional and local legislation, norms and standards, policies and protocols affecting the conservation of Cheetah and Wild Dogs, and promote the compliance thereof; and

• establish viable populations of Cheetah and Wild Dogs within a matrix of land uses using a metapopulation approach in these species’ extirpated and resident distributions.

The Wildlife Conservation Society and Zoological Society of London are coordinating a continent-wide conservation planning process for Cheetah and African Wild Dogs in Africa, under the auspices of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s Cat and Canid Specialist Groups. This has involved the convening of a number of regional conservation planning meetings, followed by national meetings. The southern African conservation action planning meeting was held in Jwaneng, Botswana in December 2007 and the Endangered Wildlife Trust then took the lead role in coordinating the South African national conservation action planning process.

The first step in this process was the convening of a Population and Habitat Viability Assessment (PHVA) workshop for Cheetah to complement the PHVA conducted for Wild Dogs in 1997. During recent years, Cheetah have been reintroduced into at least 37 small to medium sized fenced reserves, significantly increasing the numbers and geographic range of the species. However, most of these reserves contain small populations, and without coordinated management, there is a risk that inbreeding will occur. The PHVA provided the tools to manage isolated reintroduced populations as a coordinated metapopulation, where subpopulations are linked by management interventions.

Following the PHVA, the National Conservation Action Planning meeting for Cheetah and Wild Dogs was held in June 2009, in Bela Bela, Limpopo. Here stakeholders mapped out a comprehensive conservation strategy for Cheetah and Wild Dogs in South Africa.

Another workshop was then held in September 2009 to discuss the way forward for Cheetah conservation. At this workshop it was agreed that the EWT’s Carnivore Conservation Group (EWT-CCG) would coordinate the process, while the EWT’s IT 4 Conservation Group (EWT-IT4CG) is well placed to develop the baseline Cheetah database. This will contain information critical to ensuring demographic and genetic integrity of the Cheetah population and avoiding over-population in small reserves.  The next step is to gain buy-in from all landowners with Cheetah on their property and to put together a management plan for the Cheetah metapopulation.

The report that will form the basis for the Biodiversity Management Plan for Species has been finalised and is available here . The Biodiversity Management Plan for Species will take another year to finalise.

The national planning process was made possible by a grant to the EWT by the Howard G. Buffett Foundation’s African Cheetah Initiative.

Ends

Contact: Harriet Davies-Mostert
Endangered Wildlife Trust
Manager, Carnivore Conservation Group
Tel: +27 (0)82 507 9223
Email: harrietd@ewt.org.za

Or

EWT media office
Tel: +27 (0)11 486 1102
Email: media@ewt.org.za

So Usain Bolt yesterday adopted a Cheetah. And he names her “Lightning Bolt”.

Bolt - Cheetah Cub

Lol. Guess, we know how the training sessions are going to be few years down the line.

ON YOUR MARKS – GET SET – GO! BOLT WINS AGAINST BOLT, BUT ONLY BY A WHISKER!!(teeheehee)

Question remains, which Bolt will win

Jamaica’s champion sprinter Usain Bolt adopts a cheetah during a four-day trip to Kenya to promote conservation…. From BBC News. Full story

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Jamaica’s champion sprinter Usain Bolt adopts a cheetah during a four-day trip to Kenya to promote conservation…. From BBC News. Full story

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