Radio collars are killing the cheetahs in Kuno. Here is how — and why

Pet dogs get acute moist dermatitis or hot spots. Hot spots are often triggered or aggravated by a tick or flea bite, and can worsen rapidly. They are common under collars, and a wet coat makes the condition worse. Tight-fitting collars can cause pressure necrosis — think bedsores — that begins with rapid loss of hair around the neck.

Weight matters…

Since the 1970s, satellite telemetry has made it possible to monitor individual birds and animals over continental distances. These tracking devices have become lighter and more sophisticated over time — so much so that there are VHF radio telemeters for even insects today.

Globally, the thumb rule is to keep the weight of a radio collar to less than 3% of the animal’s body weight. The size of the battery is important — a lighter one would need replacement sooner, which cannot be done without sedating the animal. Most modern collars for wild cats weigh around 400 g, which is light enough for cheetahs that typically weigh between 20 kg and 60 kg.

 

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Alan Wilson of the Royal Veterinary College, London, developed a special collar integrating motion tracking technologies for a landmark study in Botswana. “Our collars were around 340 grams. There are lighter ones but getting to less than half of 400 g would be really quite difficult. Cheetahs are hard to fit collars on as their heads are not much bigger than their necks, especially younger animals,” Prof Wilson said.

…So do the rains

South African veterinarian Dr Adrian Tordiffe, who is part of the team of experts managing the cheetahs in Kuno, was the first to identify the collar-induced wounds last week.

Asked if the collars were fitted properly, he said: “These cheetahs have been wearing these collars for several months in India during the dry periods. They didn’t have any issues (with the collars) until the monsoon arrived.”

Dr Tordiffe explained that secondary bacterial infections under the collars are not reported in African conditions where the skin gets a chance to dry completely between spells of rain. “Rainfall is a lot less in Africa than…in India. In historical times, cheetahs would have done fine during the monsoon in India because they did not wear collars then,” he said.

Most paintings and photos of coursing cheetahs from Mughal or British times show the animals were collared like dogs, and possibly also suffered occasional ‘hot spots’ in the neck.

There are records of festering collar-induced injuries in wild cats in India. Wildlife biologist Dr Y V Jhala, the architect of the Cheetah project, recalled two occasions when collars were taken off a tiger and a lion to treat maggot-infested wounds. “Cats can’t clean neck wounds by licking, but such cases are rare,” he said.

Yet, multiple cheetahs have developed neck sores in Kuno.

3 possible factors

Three factors could have made the Kuno cheetahs more vulnerable due to collars than other big cats and individuals of the species in Africa.

* Cheetahs, Dr Jhala pointed out, grow a winter coat. “It’s a little more furry compared to the coats of tigers or leopards. It (the coat) would hold more water and take longer to dry,” he said. This ‘wet mat’ effect could weaken the skin over time.

* A 2020 study led by researchers from Swansea University, UK, criticised the 3% collar weight rule for not factoring in “animal athleticism”. Using collar-attached accelerometers, the researchers found that during movement, the forces exerted by collars were generally equivalent to up to five times the collar’s weight for a lion — and a massive 18 times for a cheetah.

In theory, that would make a 400 g collar ‘weigh’ more than 7 kg on a sprinting cheetah — a lot of weight to carry on a wet coat.

* The pathogens that aggravated the wound under the collar could be novel either to the African cheetahs or to Indian conditions. These animals could be vulnerable to certain local pathogens to which Indian tigers and leopards may be immune. Or they could have carried some dormant pathogens that flourished in new conditions, given the animals’ loss of immunity due to stress.

“These are all possibilities, and we may be able to pinpoint the cause only when samples are lab tested,” Dr Rajesh Gopal, head of the Cheetah steering committee, said.

Future is uncertain

Kuno’s challenge right now is to track, immobilise, and check all the cheetahs for neck injuries. But putting all the animals back in Bomas will push the project back by several months.

Most critically, there is no roadmap yet for the next monsoon. “If these cheetahs are re-released with new radio collars, will they have to be captured again before the next monsoon?” wildlife biologist Dr Sanjay Gubbi said.

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Dr Tordiffe acknowledged the problem.“It would be irresponsible for us to try and release cheetahs without collars. So this has created quite a serious issue. We have to come up with a solution.”