This newborn rhino may be just over a week old but aptly-named Ajang – Nepalese for enormous – already weighs in at 13 stones.
Staff at ZSL Whipsnade Zoo near Dunstable, Bedfordshire, where he was born last Tuesday, said the 90-centimetre-high calf was already throwing his weight around and keeping mum Behin busy.
The birth of the greater one-horned rhino has not only delighted zoo keepers, but also conservationists working to protect the endangered species in the wild, a spokeswoman said yesterday.
Behin, a gift from the government of Nepal, is already mum to three-year-old Asha, but Ajang was the first offspring for father Hugo, 12, who arrived from Poland two years ago.
Keepers at Whipsnade watched the labour and birth through a CCTV monitor set up next door to the “nursery paddock” so they could catch every moment without disturbing mother or calf.
Deputy section leader Veronica Watkins watched the entire event right up until the moment Ajang got to his feet 20 minutes after being born.
She said: “It was a tough and exhausting labour for Behin, so it was terrific relief to watch her deliver a healthy young calf who was up on his feet in a very short time. She is being a fantastic mum too.
“It’s great to build the population in captivity, but these animals aren’t doing so well in the wild where their species is under constant threat.
“We hope visitors who see Ajang will want to help us protect the last of his kind in the wild.”
Asian rhino, which are endangered in the wild, are browsers, can weigh up to two tonnes and measure around 1.8 metres at shoulder height.
The Zoological Society of London (ZSL), which runs Whipsnade and London Zoo, carries out conservation work in Nepal to try to stabilise the rhinos’ dwindling population.
Threatened in the wild by poachers, invasive plants and habitat degradation, the greater one-horned rhino is critically endangered, the spokeswoman said.
She said Nepal’s rhino population had fallen victim to intensive poaching over the past decade as the country was gripped by civil war, and now has less than 450 rhinos in three populations.
ZSL supports systematic anti-poaching and monitoring patrols in Nepal, she said, and recently the country saw its first birth of a rhino calf – a strong indicator that patrols are bringing stability to the rhino population.
Ajang, the third calf to be born at Whipsnade, is now enjoying his yard at the zoo’s Rhinos of Nepal exhibit.