Here’s a not-so-small new addition to the Singapore Zoo family: a male baby white rhino, the first to be born at the zoo in five years. The as-of-yet unnamed calf is the 11th from 32-year-old female white rhino Donsa, and he’s one of seven white rhinos currently residing in the wildlife park.
According to Wildlife Reserves Singapore, zookeepers were preparing the birthing den two days before for the new arrival.
The energetic little rhino calf was apparently up and exploring his surroundings within an hour of his birth in the early morning of Sept 6. He is currently “bonding with mom” at the zoo’s back-of-house facility, where keepers are making use of the opportunity to allow him to get used to their presence, so that he can undergo medical examinations in the future without getting stressed.
Watch his escapades below.
If you’d like a glimpse of white rhinos, his father Hoepel and the others are still having their daily feeding sessions at 1:15pm.
Altogether, the Singapore Zoo has seen the birth of 21 white rhino calves, some of which have been sent to countries like Australia and Indonesia as part of a global exchange programme.
Alongside Indian rhinos, white rhinos are the largest species of land mammals after elephants. Unfortunately, they are still being poached for their horns — you can find them listed as “near threatened” in the wild on the Red List of Threatened Species by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.
Reader Interactions