Babies Galore!

As Jenn has already mentioned, we went to the Wild Animal Park some days back. Jenn had mentioned that she took 200 photos, but she was only subjecting you to five or so. Well, I took 700 and you guys aren’t as lucky. But don’t worry, it won’t be all 700, I promise.

Since the wild animal park was originally created as a breeding facility, I figured I’ll start by posting pictures of the babies. This animal we saw while on the one free safari ride. It’s at the back of the park, so hoof it down there the first thing you do, assuming you get there early enough. We got there, I believe, about 10 a.m., and it wasn’t that crowded. This was the first baby we saw.

This particular baby had just been born that morning. He was so new that you could see his umbilical cord. He was standing, but wasn’t walking so well. His legs were still really rickety.

Here is the mother and her baby. There is a second baby that may or may not be her baby. I’m not sure how often they can have babies, but right after the other like that seems to be really fast. I wouldn’t want to have so many babies so close together. It would be too much work!

Towards the end of the day, we went back to the safari ride again. It ended at 4:30 and we managed to get the last ride. We were lucky too, because we saw the baby again, but this time by itself. During the first few days of its life, it doesn’t have a smell. They didn’t explain why that was, but the mother kept the baby away from the herd and stood guard. I couldn’t find anything on the internet either. But here’s a photo of the baby.

The only thing I can think of is that should the herd be hunted by something, the baby, who doesn’t smell and has rickety legs and is away from the herd, wouldn’t be found by the hunter.

Crossposted to Samantha Ling, Dreamwidth and Livejournal