Czech zoo has world's first cheetah with artificial hip

A cheetah at a Czech zoo has become the first in the world to be fitted with an artificial hip. The two-year-old cheetah, from a zoo in Usti nad Labem in north Bohemia, had been suffering from a congenital disorder of a hip joint. The animal was operated on by doctors at a local hospital, to replace the distorted joint with an artificial one. A zoo spokesman said that without an operation the big cat would have been condemned to a gradual loss of mobility and would have had to be put down.