Baby Update

It’s been a busy few months in the zoo nurseries here in Oz, so it’s high time for an update. These aren’t all the zoo babies that have been born in the last few months – just the pregnancies that I’ve had a hand in monitoring.

Cheetah Cubs – 3 Oct 2009, 2 boys & 2 girls

After months of trying, one of our young cheetahs got pregnant just as I was leaving the zoo last July. She had 4 adorable cubs the week before I went back to Dubbo in October, and the big excitement was that 2 of them were king cheetahs. King cheetahs have a striped coat instead of a spotted coat, and while it’s a natural thing, it’s very rare. So all the cheetah keepers are busting their buttons! They’re all healthy, and growing fast.
king (sister) and regular (brother) coat patterns side-by-side


Mali (Asian elephant) – 16 Jan 2010, girl

If you remember the “elephant doula” story when I was working closely with Melbourne Zoo to monitor an elephant pregnancy – this is the outcome! An adorable (and very hairy!) little girl. She took her sweet time making her grand entrance. Everyone involved – whether they were monitoring her behaviour, or her hormones, or using ultrasound – expected her to give birth weeks before she did (which isn’t that long when you have a 2-year pregnancy). Anyway, when she finally did come out, it went very smoothly. And the vets at Melbourne Zoo (who are some of the best people) just sent me an adorable picture thanking me for my help. Yes – it’s proudly hanging on our wall. You can see more cute pics here.

Kufara (black rhino) – 17 Feb 2010, girl

When I started working at the zoo last year, Bakhita’s pregnancy was the first one that I diagnosed, so I have a special attachment to her. She just recently gave birth to the cutest little girl, and is being a very good mum. I was able to get a few glimpses of her when I was out in Dubbo recently. I’ve been told before that rhino babies are the cutest of all babies, and I kinda thought “whatever – most babies are cute.” But they really are SO adorable!!! And I’m not a big mushy cute-baby person.

Pathi Harn (Asian elephant) – 10 Mar 2010, boy

In contrast to Mali, who waited until the very end of the “parturition window,” Pathi Harn initiated his grand entrance to the world fairly early and caught everyone a little off guard. And then he decided to put everything on hold. PornTip (the mum) looked like her water broke, she was showing birthing behaviour, the German guy who travels the world assisting with elephant births had made it into town… and then everything stopped. They couldn’t detect fetal movement, and after the water breaks, the fetus can only survive a couple of days. So they decided it had died, and announced that to the media. And then FIVE days later, a zoo gardener was making his early morning rounds, and spied a small grey blob in the elephant enclosure. PornTip had a very short labour and gave birth at 3am to a little boy, who was weak, but alive. So now the zoo had to go back to the media and explain that by “dead,” they actually meant “alive” – you know, one of those common misunderstandings. So he was our “Miracle Baby,” also known as Mr. Shuffles. And despite a close call with the pool a few days later, he is doing just fine.

Pathi Harn with his cousin Luk Chai and rest of fam