Maleika’s African Tales

This is the incredible story of Maleika, a cheetah mother and her six cubs: Martha, Malte, Mirelèe, Marlo, Mia and Majet. With their scruffy neck mane, cubs look like punks, and every day the little ones become cheekier and braver. Life is still a game for the young cheetahs, and they are protected by their mother Maleika. Set in the magnificent landscape of the Masai Mara natural reserve in Tanzania, the cheetah family experiences adventurous, difficult, and funny moments in their fight for survival. Cheetahs in the Kalahari Desert can only survive if they manage to adapt to the harsh conditions. Cheetahs like such dry climate. Well, usually yes, but they need enough animals to hunt. The same problem has a cheetah mother in the Okavango Delta who brought up 5 youngsters. By the way, we cheetahs are always alone as mothers. I hate to tell you that, but males are lazy guys. Most of their life they stick together, take it the easy way and sometime harass us mothers, as they would like to mate while we must take care of our offspring.

Lions are extraordinarily strong, much stronger than us, Cheetahs, but far slower. After all, they are big cats and quite often seen as the King Of The Beasts. We follow them in the austere desert areas in the Kalahari read sand dunes as well as along the banks of the Chobe river. How can they survive in such a stretch of land? They are almost as ghosts. You can search them for weeks without seeing a glimpse of them. And then they show up — well fed and in perfect shape.

Few people can see the difference between cheetahs and leopards. Well, we cheetahs have longer legs, as we hunt with great intensity and speed. Our faces have typical tear-stripes and there are black spots on our fur. Leopards are animals of sheer power and they have rosettes on their backs and bellies. They can be quite dangerous for us cheetahs, so, I had to teach my kids to avoid any encounters with them. It’s a good thing leopard are significantly slower than us. But during the night, leopards are the stars.