Endangered baby rhino born at Czech zoo is named Kyiv in honour of Ukraine

Authored by lbc.co.uk and submitted by PandaMuffin1
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The critically endangered eastern black rhinoceros was born at the Dvur Kralove zoo in Prague.

A Czech zoo has welcomed a critically endangered eastern black rhinoceros baby that has taken the name of Ukraine’s capital Kyiv in honour of that country’s resistance to invading Russian forces.

The rhino was born early on March 4 in the Dvur Kralove zoo, a rare occurrence for the facility even if it has the most rhinos belonging to the subspecies.

“The name is another expression of our support for the Ukrainian heroes,” said zoo director, Premysl Rabas.

Kyiv’s mother, Eva, has been taking care of him in a best possible way, the zoo said, with the baby gaining a kilogram a day. The baby currently weighs about 50 kilograms.

Poaching has reduced the number of the eastern black rhinos living in the wild to about 800. The Czech park has 14.

Only three other such rhinos have been born in other zoos around the world in the last year.

A total of 47 eastern black rhinos have been born in Dvur Kralove since the park received the first one in 1971.

Many of them are now in various zoos around the world but nine have been returned to Rwanda and Tanzania to live in the wild.

saintlyknighted on March 17th, 2022 at 03:38 UTC »

To me the craziest thing about this war is that Putin the Kremlin would have expected some international blowback, they may have expected some Ukrainian resistance, but I don’t think they ever imagined that an entire counter-culture would’ve emerged in favour of Ukraine. All over the world we’re seeing streets being renamed “Zelensky”, Russian names on menus such as Moskva being changed to Kyiv, and people of all races and religions chanting Slava Ukraini and waving yellow-blue flags, despite many of them having virtually no knowledge of Ukraine before last month. It’s heartwarming, although at the same time I’m sad that the Russian people and their culture will be taking a hit that will take years to recover, through no real fault of their own.

AmazinglyOdd81 on March 16th, 2022 at 19:33 UTC »

Very nice gesture

xTCHx on March 16th, 2022 at 18:41 UTC »

Congratulations.

These rhino ears make me laugh.