While our dear friend Robyn informs us that Indian Rhino Jamie in Tampa Lowry, in Florida, is really close to have her fourth baby and the very first with the mate Johnny (Juanpur), we are happy to post another group of news gathered from RhinoWorld. We can’t help to highlight that, as we are only a little “crash” of volunteers, we need your help in keeping updated and corrected Worldrhino.com: do not esitate to contact us through any of our Official Channels!
White Oak Conservation and some outstanding issues resolved
As many of you recall and know, White Oak Conservation has always been kind of “stingy” with Rhino information. The Facility holds three species of Rhino: Southern White (C.s.simum), Southern Black (D.b.minor) and Indian Rhino (R. unicornis).
About the Indian Rhino crash, we finally have the official number and names of the specimen held by the Conservation: you can check the list through our dedicated page!
About the Southern White Rhinos, it is not clear how many of them resides there. The crash is really big, quite some calves are born each year, but we totally lack information on names and date of birth and provenience. The last info we have are from an old sources which we are afraid to be too “antiquated”. Anyway, we can do some fill in: last year, in July, two female calves were born (a third one followed later) and we found out how they were named. Now, about the first two baby, we can also say who are their mums: for calf Darla her mom is “Dubz” while for baby “Dory” her mom is “Ethel”. Nothing is known about their dad.
Also, the Conservation let know that it is interested in acquire more Rhinos from South Africa. We are not very pleased to hear such news, since we believe there is much more to be done in the autoctone metapopulation of Southern White Rhino in USA. There are young female stuck in maternal herd with very low rate of births and even young female in no breeding herd at all. It is imperative that these issues should be resolved in quite rapid time or good genetical potential will be totally wasted.
On the Southern Black Rhino side, we are over the moon: finally we know exactly how many specimen the facility holds and where are they from! As we mentioned few months ago, there was a little male calf born in 2018, Tidbit, that died roughly one year after his precious birth. We know now who are his parents: they are two young specimen brought at the Facility back in 2014, saving them form a Sanctuary in Africa where they were the lonely survivors of a poaching attack. The female is called Little Bit and the male is called Tyson: Tidbit’s name was a fusion of their names! Even if Tidbit needed to be hand-reared by the Keepers for unknown problems, and his subsequently death make us feel real sad, we are glad to hear that Tidbit’s parents are expecting another calf for this year. Obviously, if the Facility will released more info, we are going to updated you immediately.
There is also another adult male: he is Lee. He is quite old and he was mentioned to have some chronic eye problem which were treated successfully by the Facility Vet team.
We invite you to check our White Oak Conservation page to visit the new ID pages!
Cincinnati Zoo, a baby and a death
Few days ago, Cincinnati Zoo (Ohio, USA) announced that Eastern Black Rhino pair Seyia and Faru were expecting their second calf. The mating took place around June last year, so Seyia is heavy pregnant and due to give birth any day from the announce. A good chemistry between the two Rhinos, with the second calf arriving only 3 years after the previous one. In USA, the Eastern Black Rhino median interbirth interval is much longer, with 5-6 years between a calf and another: Seyia and Faru are a bit of exception, only tied by Des Moines couple, Ayana and Kiano!
On Friday 21 August 2020, Seyia has given birth to a healthy baby rhino. It has not announced yet the sex of the newborn, but from the very few pictures available, it seems to us again a male. We’ll wait for updates from the Zoo Official Channel.
Together with this gorgeous news, comes a sad one, that the Zoo inexplicably didn’t make public: between April or May 2020, Manjula, the Facility only Indian Rhino had passed away. She was quite young, with no calves produced and an entire life spent without a mate. We cannot say much more about Manjula’s passing. We hope that maybe the Zoo itself will produce an appropriate press release in the future.
We apologize for the delay the news are coming out, but since our Team is very small, it takes times to gather all the required materials to write meaningfull posts. If anyone would like to help us, he/she is very welcomed!
