Cuba zookeepers celebrate birth of rare baby white rhino

HAVANA, June 24 (Reuters) – The zookeepers at Cuba’s Nationwide Zoo are particularly happy with Ale, a pudgy, gray-brown child white rhinoceros born earlier this month on the outskirts of capital Havana.

For starters, he is cute. Child rhinos look much like adults, however have a stub instead of the horn and thus, are extra docile in look.

However the white rhino can be a threatened species, and zoos the world throughout have been requested to breed them in captivity within the hope of making a gene financial institution that may assist protect the species ought to it go extinct within the wild.

“It’s a nice privilege for us to have the ability to contribute to the rescue of a species as threatened because the white rhinoceros,” mentioned Alexander Arango, a Cuban zoo specialist in unique wildlife, as he watched the new child graze on a patch of grass beside his mom, Katherine.

Cuba, says Arango, now has the second largest inhabitants of white rhinos of any zoo in Latin America – a complete of 8 – due to Ale and the beginning of his sister, Mel, in 2019. Earlier than that, it had been almost twenty years for the reason that earlier beginning.

In a Caribbean island nation with restricted assets and much from Africa, the rising success in copy is a degree of delight, the zookeepers advised Reuters.

White rhinos, among the many largest land mammals, have suffered lately as poaching has elevated throughout their house vary, primarily throughout southern Africa. That has put extra stress on zoos to keep up the species, the zookeepers mentioned.

Cuba’s Nationwide Zoo is a favourite attraction for Cubans, with 1,473 specimens of greater than 120 species, together with massive animals resembling elephants, rhinos and giraffes.

Reporting by Reuters TV; writing by Dave Sherwood; Modifying by Sandra Maler

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