This photo shows a female Rothschild giraffe calf (r.) alongside her mother, Petal, at the LEO Zoological Conservation Center in Greenwich, Conn. The calf, born March 22, is the first giraffe born at the off-exhibit conservation center. The Rothschild giraffe is listed as an endangered subspecies.
By Allison Terry, Correspondent / March 25, 2013 at 11:19 am EDT
Petal, a 6-year-old endangered Rothschild giraffe, gave birth to a female calf Friday, marking the first giraffe birth for the LEO Zoological Conservation Center in Greenwich, Conn.
The mother and baby giraffe have bonded “extremely well,” according to the center staff. Within 30 minutes of the birth, the calf was standing and nursing while the mother cleaned her with her 18-inch tongue.
“It's really astonishing how a huge animal like that ... how delicately and in such a nurturing way she approaches caring for her calf,” Marcelle Leone, founder and director of the center, told the Greenwich Time. "She's a great mom," Ms. Leone added.
Daughter-Calf
Leone said the newborn calf is already curious and approaching humans. She joins the center’s five other giraffes, including two pregnant ones.
The LEO Zoological Conservation Center is a 100-acre refuge that focuses on breeding at-risk species. The center houses the animals at off-site breeding centers providing large, natural habitats and an environment for the animals in which humans are not all around them. Other species that have had new births at the center include a kangaroo, an aardvark, and a white-faced Saki monkey.
The giraffe birth is a milestone for the center, which is home to the only giraffes in Connecticut.
“This is serving our mission,” Leone said. “What we're doing is working. Being an off-exhibit facility, it means so much for the animals to live that low-impact life.”
Mother and daughter
Native to East Africa, the Rothschild giraffe is classified as endangered on the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List – fewer than 670 are left in the wild. They are now extinct in the Sudan, but can still be found in western Kenya and eastern Uganda. They are named after Lord Walter Rothschild, a British zoologist, who encountered them on an expedition to East Africa in the early 1900s.
After the average gestation period of 15 months, mother giraffes give birth while standing in order to guard against predators, which means baby giraffes drop six feet to the ground when born. More than half of calves born in the wild fall prey to predators.
Rothschild giraffes are distinguished from other giraffe subspecies by their coloring and patch marks, which are less jagged than Masaii giraffes. They have light, cream-colored background and no markings below their knees, according to the Rothschild Research Project based in Kenya. No two giraffes have the same pattern on their coats – their markings can be used to identify them, like fingerprints for humans.
The newborn giraffe will nurse for nine months, and there are currently no plans to send her to another facility.
“The offspring will definitely be with us for the first year, if not indefinitely,” Leone told the Greenwich Time.
The LEO Zoological Conservation Center is asking people to help name the new giraffe, which now stands 6 feet tall. The average height for females is 16 to 18 feet, and for males 17 to 20 feet. Their weight ranges from 1,800 to 2,600 pounds.
Lauren Hinson, a zookeeper at the LEO Zoological Conservation Center in Greenwich, gives Petal, a Rothschild giraffe, a carrot at the center Tuesday, March 12, 2013.
NOTE: Readers who have visited here before will remember that I live in a household populated by a large number of feral cats, whom we adopted to save them from a rough short life in the Tuxedo Park outdoors. Webster's defines "feral" as "having escaped from domestication and become wild," and alternatively, "relating to, or suggestive of a wild beast."
But those of us who know feral cats think of them first as individuals -- mostly shy and gentle creatures -- who are both kind and respond to kindness. In my experience, they are, like Petal, excellent and doting parents. Sometimes, like our dear cat Eddie, they come all the way back to placid, even enlightened, domesticity. Other times they continue to keep (mainly) their own counsel.
Last night, all night, lying in bed after a very long Manhattan day, full moon shining through my window onto my pillow like a perimeter beacon in a Hollywood prison movie, I thought about this, and also about the three lunatics I encountered on consecutive city subway rides, and about human acquaintances who were vastly more feral than any animals, wild or domestic. In my weirdest dream that evening, I imagined the Beatles song "Yesterday," which I've always disliked, was in fact a very great work of art, not a dreary bore.
But I was In Another Land then. I'm back now.
Petal
In Another Land -- Rolling Stones (Link)
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