A unicorn was born at Easter at the Dutch Burger Zoo in Arnhem. A healthy male owes his life to an advanced European breeding program.
On Sunday morning, a unicorn, still without a name, was born at the Burger Zoo. She is the fourth of a 17-year-old female rhino. It is the wide-lipped rhinoceros, or southern white rhinoceros: it is the largest and most sociable of the five rhino species.
This species is also the least endangered, with around 11,000 broad-lipped rhinos living in the wild worldwide. That’s not much, but it is much more than the number of northern white rhinos. There are only two of them: mother and daughter Nagine and Fatu. They are guarded around the clock in a kenyan nature park.
Read more. The last male died two years ago, but there is still hope: Science must save the rhino species (+)
With the birth of a new rhino cub, the Dutch Zoo has become among the top five of the most successful rhinoceros breeders in Europe. Every year, between ten and fifteen animals are born in more than 80 European zoos. The gestation period of the female is 17 months and the young man stays with the mother for an average of three years. About a hundred years ago, the broad-lipped rhino nearly became extinct. Then only a few dozen animals were left in the KwaZulu-Natal region of South Africa. All the broad-lipped rhinos that live today are descendants of these animals.
