Rusty has had eye problems for quite a while now so it was time for a professional doctor to have a look at him. On 13th November 2011, Jannes Brandt came to the farm in order to have a closer look at Rusty.
The first step was for Rudie to dart Rusty and remove him from the camp. The operation clinic was set up just outside of the camp to reduce unnecessary stress and moving of the cheetah.
After having a closer look and inspecting Rusty's eyes carefully, Jannes diagnosed glaucoma, which makes him have tunnel vision. He has it in both eyes but one is worse than the other and it affects both motion vision and depth vision, which explains why he could not see his food properly when given to him. Glaucoma can be genetic or developed naturally but there is no cure for it and there is not any treatment that can improve his condition. Unfortunately, in the long term glaucoma can lead to blindness.
If Rusty was released in a coalition with Bitchface and Sandy then he would probably survive, but from all our other captive coalitions it has become clear that whenever we release a group of cheetahs, they split up after time, increasing the likelihood of Rusty going off on his own. He would not be able to hunt or defend himself from predators with this debilitating vision condition and his chances of survival would be very slim.
Poor Rusty! But luckily we are here to take care of him and will monitor is vision condition on an ongoing basis to make his life as good as possible!
No comments:
Post a Comment