Whipsnade Zoo's 61st Rhino Calf Carries a Name From 1971

A southern white rhino calf named Mazinda is tottering around the rhino barn at Whipsnade Zoo in Bedfordshire, England, and he arrived carrying a name with 55 years of history behind it.

The male calf was born on Sunday, November 1, at around 4 p.m., to mother Fahari and father Sizzle, the zoo said. He weighed an estimated 40 kilograms, about 88 pounds, which the zoo notes is roughly 11 times heavier than the average human baby.

He is the 61st southern white rhino calf born at Whipsnade since its conservation breeding programme began in 1970, when a herd of white rhinos arrived from South Africa under an agreement with the Natal Parks Board to help safeguard the species.

The name is the tribute. One of those original females was already pregnant when she arrived, and on June 24, 1971, she gave birth to the first white rhino calf ever born in Europe. Keepers named that calf Mazinda. More than five decades later, the newest member of the herd carries her name.

Mark Holden, the zoo's hoofstock team leader, said Fahari is proving to be the perfect parent, and he described the calf learning to totter around and test his balance. For now the pair are staying together in the indoor rhino house, where visitors have a chance of spotting them.

The programme Mazinda joins is part of a wider European effort to keep a healthy, genetically diverse population of southern white rhinos as a safeguard for the species. It is a species that needs one. Southern white rhinos were driven down to roughly 20 wild individuals in the late 19th century, and their recovery to around 17,500 today is one of the clearest comeback stories in conservation, built in part by breeding programmes like this one.

The timing gives the birth one more layer. ZSL, the conservation charity that runs Whipsnade, is celebrating its 200th anniversary year, and the zoo is in the middle of a genuine baby boom, with lion cubs, red panda twins and an Asian elephant calf all born there this year.

The contrast inside the species is stark. The southern white rhino is the recovery; its northern cousin is down to two females, both past breeding age, and survives now only as a scientific project. Every southern calf like Mazinda is part of why the word rhino isn't only a story about endings.

Rhino pregnancies run about 16 months, so Mazinda has been a long time coming. Sixty-one calves into a programme that started with one pregnant female in 1970, the line that produced Europe's first white rhino calf is still going.