A baby cheetah cub is being hand-fed by caretakers for several weeks at the National Zoo’s sister facility in Virginia after its siblings were stillborn and its mother abandoned it.

       In a Twitter message, officials with the National Zoo said the male cheetah cub is being cared for by staff at its facility, the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute (SCBI) in Front Royal, Va.

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       He was one of a litter of three cubs born Sept. 16 to 7-year-old cheetah mama, Sukiri. Animal caretakers are feeding the surviving cheetah with a bottle of formula for now, and he will eventually be placed with a foster cheetah mom at another zoo.

       Officials didn’t say which zoo will take him, but they indicated there’s another female cheetah at a zoo that’s set to give birth and the surviving cub will be “introduced to that litter pending any other developments.”

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       The cub will be at the facility in Front Royal for several weeks and is closely watched. Like a newborn baby human, it gets fed often — every 2 to 3？ hours.

       Animal keepers said he’s “strong, active, vocal and eating well.” But there is no cheetah camera to watch him.

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       In June, Sukiri was bred with a 5-year-old male named Scott. She was trained to voluntarily allow caretakers to do ultrasounds, and in late July they confirmed she was pregnant. Sukiri had a normal pregnancy, and experts said there were no signs of any complications. She birthed the three cubs, but two were stillborn.

       According to animal experts, it is not uncommon for cheetahs to have stillborn cubs.

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       Keepers stepped in a day after Sukiri gave birth because even though she nursed the surviving cub on the night it was born, she “started to ignore the cub” the next day, officials said. Experts said when they removed it from her yard area, she didn’t seem agitated and kept eating normally.

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       Experts said that in the wild, female cheetahs typically abandon a lone cub.

       Sukiri ate her two stillborn cubs, which is “not unusual for a carnivore and in line with wild female cheetah behavior as a dead cub invites predators,” officials said in a statement.

       Cheetahs are native to sub-Saharan Africa and live in small, isolated populations, experts said. They have faced a population decline to only 7,000 in the wild because of poaching and encroachment on their habitat. They’re considered “vulnerable to extinction,” according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

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       The SCBI is a facility that breeds and studies roughly 20 species. It is one of 10 in the United States that breeds and raises cheetahs under human care, officials said. There have been 15 litters of cheetahs born there since 2007.

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       SCBI officials said they hope to “have more cheetah cubs born” there soon. But for now the “timing is not ideal for the cub to stay” there, Adrienne Crosier, SCBI’s cheetah reproductive biologist, said in the statement.

       Crosier said “there is not enough stimulation to keep milk production going for a singleton” while it’s bottle-fed.

       She said that while keepers can “care for this cub in the short term, it’s important he learns how to be a cheetah from other cheetahs close to his age and have the attention of an adult female cheetah soon.”