It was a beautiful sunny day out on the S28 in Kruger National Park, when field guide Steyn Jacobsohn took his guests on a drive in search of a group of male cheetahs he knew to be in the area. After driving a short distance down the road, they encountered one of the males standing in the middle of the road.
According to Steyn, the male was “running around and contact calling like crazy”. Everyone immediately jumped to the conclusion that he must have been trying to track down his brothers.
On this particular day, the wind was blustering, leading anyone watching to wonder how the other cheetahs would be able to hear the calls through the noise of the wind. The male paced back and forth, chirping incessantly and scanning his surroundings, looking for any sign of his brothers.
Family Reunites
Eventually, after many unanswered calls, the cheetah was able to find one of his brothers. The two reunited warmly amongst the blowing grass, but their mission wasn’t over.
With one more brother still unaccounted for, the two brothers decided to continue the search. They wandered back and forth across the road, zigzagging through the tall grass in hopes of finding their brother, all the while continuing their contact calls.
After a while of fruitless searching, the pair of brothers decided to try their luck elsewhere and disappeared further into the grass and past everyone’s line of sight. While the third brother remained absent, it was still incredible for Steyn and his group to witness the calling behaviour succeed despite the loudness of the wind and the vast distance.
What are Contact Calls?
In Steyn’s footage, the cheetah’s contact calls can be heard clearly, and honestly, they are not a sound most people would expect a cheetah to make. Cheetahs communicate with each other by using high-pitched chirps that almost sound like a bird call.
The calls are used in coalitions, but especially between a mother and her cubs. Unlike other big cats, cheetahs do not roar.
The shrill chirps they make serve another important function in the bush: camouflage. Because the sound is bird-like, most predators are not attracted to it, and the cheetahs can remain undetected in open landscapes.
Cheetah Family Bonds
Cheetah family bonds are not only defined by the close, nurturing bonds between a mother and her cubs, they also extend later into life. Male siblings form long and intense bonds into adulthood, referred to as coalitions.
These coalitions are often lifelong and serve to increase hunting success and improve territory defence. These bonds have even been recreated in captivity, where unrelated cheetahs have been paired to form strong and lasting coalition-like bonds.
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Coalitions are mostly formed by 2-3 brothers, but sometimes up to 5 males join forces. Females, on the other hand, remain solitary during adulthood and only encounter males when in heat.
A Fascinating Sighting
Even without finding their missing brother, this small drama on the S28 reminds us just how much cheetahs rely on one another, and on sound, to survive in such a vast landscape. Their high‑pitched contact calls may be strange to our ears, but they are perfectly tuned to slip unnoticed through grass and wind, keeping coalitions together and safe from larger predators.
