Explained: how two elephants brought to Kuno will help African cheetahs from leopards

Scientists suggest that elephants seem to scare predators more often because of their giant-size/intimidating size. So the probability to shoo the leopards at Kuno Park too is very high.

It reposes faith that the freshly imported Namibian cheetahs at Madhya Pradesh's Kuno National Park are certainly in safe hands.

Given the elephants' natural tendency to intimidate, the park authorities have deployed two elephants to chase away leopards from cheetah enclosures.

These elephants were brought in at the park in August this year. They were released in the enclosure which houses the eight cheetahs who are currently undergoing their acclimatization phase.

As per forest officials, these trained elephants will be used for a variety of tasks, including encircling animals for tranquilization, driving away invasive animals, spotting amid monsoon and overgrown thicket.

The elephants made their way to the MP Park after an 800-kilometre long truck journey from Sitapur Tiger Reserve.

The Cheetahs have arrived from Africa as part of an ambitious reintroduction project of the Indian government. Cheetahs went extinct in India in 1952 and the ‘African Cheetah Introduction Project in India’ has been underway since 2009, before picking up speed in the last few years.

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While India has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Namibian government for the import of cheetahs, it is also in the process of inking agreements with private game reserves in South Africa and the government there for more big cats, officials had earlier said.

Most of the cheetahs have been donated, while India also plans to buy some from private game reserves at USD 3,000-4,000 per animal, they had informed.