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201520Sep19:53

World’s first captive-​born Indian rhi­noc­eros calf, 2015, at Hellabrunn Zoo

Infor­ma­tion
pub­lished 20 Sep­tem­ber 2015 | mod­i­fied 20 Sep­tem­ber 2015
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On 31 August a male Indian rhi­noc­eros calf was born at Hellabrunn Zoo in Munich, Ger­many. Up to now it is the first Indian rhino birth in cap­tiv­ity world­wide in 2015.

Indian rhino mum and calf at HellabrunnThe rhino calf’s first pub­lic appear­ance in the Rhino House and the out­door enclo­sure was on 9 Sep­tem­ber. He is an enter­tain­ing lit­tle ras­cal. He runs and romps in his enclo­sure full of energy, enjoy­ing the sun and from time to time giv­ing his mum sev­eral nudges and prods as a way of pes­ter­ing her to come and play. As with most baby rhi­noc­eros, this storm and stress phase is usu­ally fol­lowed by moments of calm, when the lit­tle rhino lies down for a rest.

Although healthy and ener­getic things were dif­fer­ent three days after his birth. The calf sud­denly appeared to be in a weak­ened state due to an infec­tion. As a result, a deci­sion was taken at short notice by the zoo’s vet­eri­nar­i­ans, cura­tors and man­age­ment to keep the mother and child behind the scenes for a lit­tle longer and ini­ti­ate inten­sive treat­ment. He was mon­i­tored around the clock by the keep­ers and exam­ined and treated sev­eral times daily by the vets. The new­born calf was quickly back on its feet and was even­tu­ally given the all-​clear on 9 Sep­tem­ber. The infec­tion dis­cov­ered was prob­a­bly caused by the calf’s resid­ual of the umbil­i­cal cord acci­den­tally torn by his mum.

Indian rhino mum and calf in their indoor enclo­sure:

(Source: Hellabrunn — Der Münch­ner Tier­park YouTube channel)

The rhino bull [calf] is of great impor­tance for the global con­ser­va­tion breed­ing pro­gramme. Hope­fully he will bear many offspring.
Rasem Baban, Hellabrunn zoo director »

In the wild
There are cur­rently approx­i­mately 2,750 Indian rhi­noc­er­oses left in the wild, of which just over 200 live in zoos. Today the nat­ural habi­tat of the Indian Rhi­noc­eros is con­fined to a few areas in Bhutan, south­ern Nepal, the Terai Arc Land­scape and seven refuges in the two Indian states of West Ben­gal and Assam. The Indian rhi­noc­eros is listed as Vul­ner­a­ble in the IUCN Red List of Threat­ened Species.

In addi­tion to habi­tat loss, the rhino pop­u­la­tion has been brought to close extinc­tion by hunt­ing, pri­mar­ily for their horn. The rhino horn — in the pow­dered form — is highly val­ued in tra­di­tional Asian med­i­cine, even though it has no proven med­ical ben­e­fit, since the horn mostly con­sists of ker­atin, which is also found in human fin­ger­nails and hair.

Cap­tive breed­ing in (Ger­man) zoos
The small pop­u­la­tion in the wild under­pins the neces­sity of con­ser­va­tion and cap­tive breed­ing pro­grammes to save this species from going extinct. In Ger­many Indian rhi­nos are kept in only five zoos. Both the par­ents of the recently born calf resides at Hellabrunn Zoo since 1990. While the bull came from Wil­helma Zoo in Stuttgart the female was born in Nepal. There­fore, mum is par­tic­u­larly impor­tant for the gene pool of Indian rhi­noc­er­oses liv­ing in zoos. And for­tu­nately her genes have now been suc­cess­fully passed on to the new­born bull.

Indian Rhi­noc­eros facts
With a shoul­der height of up to 185 cm and weigh­ing more than 2,000 kg, the Indian rhi­noc­eros (Rhi­noc­eros uni­cor­nis) is the largest of the three species of Asian rhi­noc­er­oses. Unlike its two African rel­a­tives and the Suma­tran rhi­noc­eros, it has only one nasal horn (sim­i­lar to the Javan rhi­noc­eros), which can grow up to 20 cm. Indian rhi­noc­er­oses tend to rub their horn on the ground or on rocks, often result­ing in the horn being worn down to a thick knob.


(Source: Hellabrunn Zoo news, 09.09.2015)


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