SAN DIEGO — The San Diego Zoo Global has announced the successful birth of a female southern white rhino calf at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park. The rhino is the conservation organization’s second rhino born using artificial insemination. This calf’s birth also is a milestone, as she is the 100th southern white rhino to be born at the Safari Park.
The mother, 11-year-old Amani, gave birth to the healthy calf at 12:56 a.m. on Nov. 21, 2019, in the Nikita Kahn Rhino Rescue Center. The zoo said the calf is nursing well, and mother and calf are bonding in a quiet nursing setting. Artificial insemination of southern white rhinos has rarely been successful in the past; this is only the second successful artificial insemination birth of a southern white rhino in North America. The first was Edward, born to mom Victoria, at the Safari Park’s Nikita Kahn Rhino Rescue Center on July 28 of this year.
RELATED: Southern white rhino conceived through artificial insemination born at San Diego Zoo Safari Park
“We are so excited to welcome another healthy calf to the rhino crash at the Nikita Kahn Rhino Rescue Center,” said Barbara Durrant, Ph.D., director of Reproductive Sciences, San Diego Zoo Global. “We are very pleased Amani did so well with the birth of her first calf, and she is being very attentive to her baby. The calf is up and walking, and nursing frequently, which are all good signs. Not only are we thankful for this healthy calf, but this birth is significant, as it also represents a critical step in our effort to save the northern white rhino from the brink of extinction.”
Amani was artificially inseminated from southern white rhino J Gregory on July 12, 2018, following hormone-induced ovulation. White rhino gestation is estimated to be 485 days—but as with any baby delivery, this can differ. Amani carried her calf for 498 days. The artificial insemination and successful birth of the rhino calf represents a critical step in the organization’s ongoing work to develop the scientific knowledge required to genetically recover the northern white rhino, a distant subspecies of the southern white rhino. Only two northern white rhinos currently remain on Earth and, unfortunately, both are female.
San Diego Zoo Global has a history of expertise with rhino species. With the birth of this calf, there have now been 100 southern white rhinos born at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park, in addition to births of 74 greater one-horned rhinos and 14 black rhinos at the Safari Park
In addition to working to save the northern white rhino from extinction, San Diego Zoo Global has been involved in efforts worldwide to save many other species, for more than a century.
Amani is one of six female southern white rhinos that reside at the Nikita Kahn Rhino Rescue Center. To increase genetic diversity and the number of reproductively fit individuals in North American zoos, these rhinos were relocated to the Safari Park from private reserves in South Africa in November 2015.