Baby Indian Rhino born in Terra Natura Benidorm.   The first Indian Rhino bred in captivity in Spain.


The animal and nature park, Terra Natura Benidorm is celebrating the birth of an Indian rhinoceros (Rhinoceros unicornis), making it the first zoo in Spain to successfully breed this species in captivity.

The proud mum “Shiwa” went into labour on Tuesday (7^th February 2012) but it was not until yesterday (10/02/2012) after a 16 hour labour that the baby rhino was born, weighing a hefty 50 kilos.

Like all new mums Shiwa has not taken her eyes off her newborn . As soon as the calf was born Shiwa tried to stimulate it to make it stand up, by gently biting it's feet .

The survival of the calf depends on it being able to stand up and suckle as soon as possible.

A rhinoceros calf normally takes about a half an hour to stand up but in this case it took two hours.

So far the calf has not managed to suckle on its own so the keepers have been feeding it manually . The next 48 hours will be crucial for it's survival.

This calf was conceived despite the advanced age of the father, “Niko” who at 26 , is quite old considering males reach sexual maturity at around nine years old and the life span of the Indian Rhino is between 30 and 40 years. Females on the other hand reach sexual maturity at 5 years of age.


Benidorm, February 10, 2012

ExBenidorm

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Take a look at some more photos from Terra Natura Benidorm