A cheetah named Zura just had five cubs

A cheetah named Zura gave birth to five cubs on October 5 at the Smithsonian's Conservation Institute in Front Royal, Virginia, and a live camera is now streaming her den around the clock. The feed carries sound, so viewers can hear the chirps and tiny purrs that come with a litter of newborns learning to complain. The same camera is what staff use to monitor the family remotely. The distance is deliberate. Unlike the animals at the National Zoo in Washington, DC, cubs born at this facility have little human contact in their first weeks, which helps them bond with their mother and lets researchers study behavior they cannot observe inside a zoo habitat. The stakes are real. Roughly 7,000 cheetahs remain in the wild. For now, Zura is nursing, grooming, and occasionally refereeing. The cubs are mostly asleep, and when they are awake, they wrestle each other over nothing in particular.