Tampa Zoo Welcomes Sweetest New Baby Rhinoceros to Its Herd

’Tis the season for zoo babies, and as the world falls in love with Thailands new pygmy hippopotamus calf, we would be remiss if we ailed to mention another African ungulate making its debut in a zoo a little closer to home. Tampa’s Busch Gardens zoo has announced the birth of a tiny southern white rhino baby—a female calf—and even wants help naming the new arrival.

The baby was born on September 1 to Kisiri, an experienced mother and part of the zoo’s crash (i.e., herd) of southern white rhinos. Mother and baby are both doing well, and have recently been introduced back onto the “veldt” or large savannah area at the park where they can roam free with a variety of other African savannah animals like zebras, ostrich, giraffes, and antelopes.

Related: Rhino Calf's Cute Case of the Zoomies Instantly Goes Viral

And though the baby was over a hundred pounds at birth and is expected to grow at least another hundred per month until she reaches full size, she’s still missing something very important: a name.

“Rhino fans are encouraged to participate in a limited-time online poll to determine the calf’s name,” according to the zoo’s social media All of the rhino’s potential names come from Swahili, including Azizi, which means "precious treasure," Zahara, meaning "flower," and Zina, which translates to "secret" or "beautiful." The poll is now open and will close on Sept. 28, and the results of the naming poll will be announced on the park’s social media channels. To vote, visit this site.

All About The Souther White Rhinoceros

The southern white rhino is native to eastern and Southern Africa, and can be found in Kenya, Uganda, Namibia, Zimbabwe, and South Africa. Its status is “near threatened” on international animal conservation lists, and it is supposed that there are over 18,000 rhinos of this species in existence.

This makes them lucky, as they are the most common and populous species of rhinoceros. This was not always the case. Back at the end of the nineteenth century, there may have been as few as fifty specimens remaining due to hunting. As with all rhinoceros species, poaching for their horn and habitat loss provide the biggest threats to the animal’s future.

Their near-cousins, the northern white rhinoceros, is functionally extinct, as there are only two survivors of this species remaining, and they are both female.

As for this baby, her future is safe with her crash at Busch Gardens. It takes about two or three years for a southern white rhino to reach full size, at which point she could be as many as five thousand pounds.

The Future For Rhinos

Two rhinoceros species have been declared extinct or functionally extinct in this century: the norther white rhinoceros and the western black rhinoceros. Though some norther white rhinos still exist under heavy guard, the only two specimens are female and cannot reproduce.

The biggest threat facing rhinos is poaching for their horns, used in a variety of traditional medicines and rituals, especially in East Asia, despite no evidence that it has any beneficial effect. Though many efforts have been made to stop this trade, from levying heavy fines to rewriting herbal medicine manuals in China to remove the ingredient, to even removing horns from living rhinos and poisoning the rhinos horns, only a small treatment of anti-poaching measures are effective. And the rhinos in the wild are still being hunted.

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