Rare Rhino Baby Goes On Display At Zoo Miami
SOUTHWEST MIAMI-DADE (CBSMiami) – Zoo Miami is celebrating the arrival of a new baby rhinoceros.
"Aria" is a female black rhinoceros that was born on Sunday, May 25th.
She was the 13th successful birth at Zoo Miami for this very highly endangered species.
She weighed more than 100 pounds at birth and was born after an approximate 15 month gestation period.
Slideshow: Rare Baby Rhino Wows Crowds At Zoo Miami
The mother is 14-year-old "Circe" who was born at the Riverbanks Zoo and arrived at Zoo Miami in 2006. The father, "Eddie," is also 14-years old and was born at the Cincinnati Zoo.
Black rhinos are critically endangered as they continue to be poached at alarming rates in Eastern and Southern Africa.
The arrival of this bundle of joy is also a major landmark in the international efforts to maintain this scarce species. Poached extensively for their horns, prized in some eastern cultures for medicinal purposes and status symbols, the species is critically endangered and only about 5,000 remain in the wild. There used to be over 100,000 running wild in Africa within the past century.
When "Aria" made her public debut at the zoo, she was very tentative at first and wouldn't venture far from the barn but it didn't take long for her to get up her nerve and soon she was running from one end of the exhibit to the other.
