Visitors to Taronga Western Plains Zoo recently may have spotted rhino calf Mesi.
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The black rhino was born on April 11 and is now on exhibit with her mother Kufara. Keeper Nerida Taylor said she was the lucky 13th black rhino calf to be born at the zoo. She’s also a third-generation zoo calf.
Ms Taylor said Mesi was already a very curious and confident girl, but first-time mother Kufara was very protective of the calf.
Taronga Western Plains Zoo is the only zoo in Australia to have successfully breed three species of rhino – black, white and the greater one-horned.
Mesi, whose name means smoke, will hopefully remain in Dubbo, Ms Taylor said, and join the zoo’s breeding herd. The herd was an insurance police, she said.
“If those numbers in the wild do get really low or they do become extinct in the wild we still do have an insurance population of the rhinos, we still get to see them and generations can enjoy them into the future,” Ms Taylor said.
At four-and-a-half-months Mesi already weighs more than 100 kilograms.