From
Florian Fuchs, Augsburg
So far the young has only gotten to know the stable – it’s still too cold outside. As soon as it gets warmer at the weekend or next week at the latest, the newest resident of the Augsburg Zoo can get to know the outdoor enclosure. Earlier this week, Wiesje, a five-year-old rhino who arrived from the Netherlands in 2020 from a zoo in Arnhem, gave birth to a cub. The Augsburg Zoo has now announced this. “For a first-time mother, she is taking excellent care of the little boy and is incredibly relaxed,” the statement said.
This is not a matter of course, as the nurses had to find out to their chagrin in 2021. Back then, a rhino named Kibibi gave birth to a cub but didn’t take it. She wouldn’t let the little rhino drink until it was so weak that the zoo had to put it to sleep. In this case, raising it with a bottle, as the zoo had done with a small bull five years earlier, was not possible. It would not have had any peers of the same age and in this respect would have had to grow up alone – it would therefore hardly have been possible to integrate it into a herd.
The newborn of the rhino mother Wiesje does not have these problems, even if it came as a complete surprise to the zoo. After observing a mating act in April 2022, the staff actually did not seriously expect a birth until the end of the year.