Public cheetah running demonstrations were unheard several years ago, but now they are becoming increasingly common. As a cat lover of course I think this is fantastic! Let's make a list of places that do scheduled runs in the USA (I am including a couple that have just been built and may not be operational for a few months). Please include any I am missing. Animal Ark (Nevada) Busch Gardens (Florida) Cincinnati Zoo (Ohio) Columbus Zoo (Ohio) Dallas Zoo (Texas) Kansas City Zoo (Missouri) Project Survival Cat Haven (California) San Diego Safari Park (California)
We just saw a run for the first time down in Cincinnati and came away very impressed by it. Team Tapir223
Please call it by its proper name. While not public per se, Safari West (California) offers a behind-the-scenes Fast Cat Alley encounter. For ~$200 you can visit their cheetah run/barn(?) and even toss a ball for their two cheetah sisters to run down. It's kind of pricey, but I found it to be a lot of fun. I plan on repeating the experience now that I have a camera (again). While this a great thing for the cheetahs, I hope it expands to other cats; i.e., tiger swimming or leopards hauling things into trees.
Fresno Chaffee Zoo (California) will have a cheetah run when their new Africa expansion opens in mid October.
I am going to extend the boundary of this thread just a few miles north of the US border. Based on recent gallery posts, it appears Toronto Zoo now has a cheetah run.
Toronto does indeed have its own cheetah run. It's taken all summer for the cheetahs to figure out what is expected of them and for the zoo to figure out what they will chase... answer appears to be paper towel. Five females have been trained. Until recently only one would semi consistently run. Now it appears most of them will run. With winter coming we will just have to wait and see if they will remember what to do next spring. There will be another cheetah run in the US. I cant remember what zoo but a team was visiting about a month ago to observe the progress with Toronto's cheetah run and learn from Toronto's set up.
