Cheetah Cubs Delight Zoo Visitors

Thousands of visitors are flocking to a Tokyo zoo to get a glimpse of three cheetah cubs. The triplet cubs made their debut in the zoo just last weekend.

The triplets, named Neem, Sonia and Lily, were born in September at Tama Zoo in western Tokyo, weighing less than two pounds.

Now weighing about five and a half pounds each, they spend most of the day playing together and following their mother around.

[Taisuke Shimizu, Zookeeper]:
"Four of them, including the mother, are supposed to go back to the indoor cage together, but there's one baby that never wants to go inside.”

The cute, adorable cubs seem to be changing the visitor's conventional view of the ferocious predator.

[Midori Nogami, Zoo Visitor]:
"Human babies follow their mothers around and cheetah babies do exactly the same. I thought that was very cute."

Another visitor had mixed feelings.

[Ryoga Hirasawa, Visitor]:
"I wish I could touch them, but I'm also scared I might get eaten!"

Experts say that in the wild, cheetah cubs accompany their mothers to learn to hunt once they reach the age of five to six weeks.