LINCOLN PARK — As daylight hours lengthen and temperatures rise, spring promises baseball games, drinks on outdoor patios, walks along the lakefront and — for this year, at least — a new rhino calf at Lincoln Park Zoo.

Kapuki, a 20-year-old eastern black rhinoceros, gave birth to a 60-pound female calf March 19. 

When the zoo announced Kapuki’s pregnancy, the news felt “like hearing one of your family members was pregnant,” said Jasmine Olonilua, a 23-year-old who visits the zoo monthly. But in addition to generating excitement, Kapuki’s pregnancy raised questions among zoo goers: Does an expecting rhino experience cravings? How long would she be pregnant? Who names a baby rhino?

Here’s more about the months leading up to the calf’s birth and what zoo attendees can expect in the weeks to come.

Rhinos Don’t Have Dating Apps, But They Do Have Matchmakers 

Forget Hinge and blind dates. Kapuki paired with Utenzi, the father of her still-unnamed third calf, through a species survival plan managed by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums. 

Survival plans help preserve genetic diversity among animal populations living outside their natural habitats. By prioritizing the species’ long-term health, the breeding recommendations use captive populations, like Kapuki and her newborn, to create a “genetic backstop” if critically endangered animals go extinct in the wild, said Christine Bobko, president of the International Rhino Keeper Association.

Kapuki’s wingwomen and wingmen — or her team of biologists, scientists and husbandry managers — carefully selected her match from a studbook, a database of all 58 eastern black rhinos across North America. A bit more detailed than your average dating profile, studbooks list each animal’s lineage, breeding history and location. Besides genetic variation, the team considered personality, age and distance between rhinos as well as whether the zoo had the space needed to hold a calf. Cassy Kutilek, the Lincoln Park Zoo’s curator of large mammals and carnivores, even flew to Cincinnati to meet Utenzi and observe him interact with the female rhino there before endorsing his move to Chicago.

Romance Is Dead, For Rhinos Anyway

“Rhino love is not champagne and roses,” Bobko said. “It’s a battle zone.”

Though Utenzi arrived to Chicago in 2022, Lincoln Park Zoo waited for him to settle into his new home while introducing him to Kapuki slowly. 

Because bad introductions can end in charging, breeding is a delicate process. Utenzi and Kapuki first smelled and saw each other while separated before moving to partial physical contact through a barrier. During these interactions, Kutilek and her team watched Utenzi for signs of interest: calling for Kapuki, smelling her urine, defecating almost constantly and dragging his feet to leave his scent — the rhino equivalent of giving someone your letterman’s jacket to let other males know she’s off the market.

When the rhinos finally met in the same space, they roared, chased and sparred.

“These females want to know that they have the biggest and the best,” Bobko said. “So they’re going to test these guys.”

The birth of Lincoln Park Zoo rhino Kapuki’s (pictured at right) new calf (left) is critical for the endangered eastern black rhinoceros species. Credit: Lincoln Park Zoo

When To Announce The Pregnancy

Unlike the second trimester custom for announcing human pregnancies, zookeepers don’t consider a certain benchmark “safe” to publicly share the good news. Because rhinos can experience stillbirths, miscarriages and even fetal reabsorption, “at no point are you completely relaxed during that 16-month gestation,” Bobko said.

False pregnancies are also a real concern, Kutilek said. Lincoln Park Zoo used a hormonal profile to identify Kapuki as “with rhino,” but sometimes a failed ovulation can create the same results. In the first three months, zookeepers can use a noninvasive transrectal ultrasound to verify the pregnancy, but Kapuki’s changed behavior made Kutilek’s team confident enough to rely on the hormone analysis alone.

Expecting rhinos don’t crave fried pickles at 2 a.m. or experience major mood swings, but they eventually move more slowly in the last stretch of pregnancy. Carrying a 60-pound calf will do that to a mother. In Kapuki’s case, Kutilek had another major clue that the gentle giant was pregnant: the father’s indifference to the mother.

“Utenzi (and Kapuki) were housed in the same barn, and he had no interest in her,” Kutilek said, explaining that a male rhino is uninterested in being a family man. They neither mate with a pregnant mother nor raise the calf once it’s born.

No Gender Reveal Parties

No blue balloons or pink cupcakes — the female calf’s gender was a surprise. After five to seven months, the calf became too big to see much beyond bones on an ultrasound, Kutilek said. 

For the next few weeks, baby and mother rhino will stay behind the scenes and away from public view. The zoo will give them as much space as possible, having monitored even the birth remotely by camera.

“We try to stay pretty hands off unless we need to,” Kutilek said. “We want to make sure that bond between the mom and the calf is there and that it’s really strong.” 

Instinctually, in about two years, Kapuki will begin preparing for another potential pregnancy, even though zoo logistics will prevent her from breeding again immediately. Though eastern black rhinos are solitary animals, since the calf is female, Kapuki will allow it to stay close for two more years. 

If the offspring had been male, though, she’d have nursed him for one to two years and sent him on his way. Kapuki’s first calf, King, was sent out on his own by his mother well before reaching 2.

“At 15 months, she was like, ‘You’re out of here,’” Kutilek said, “She just wouldn’t let him in the barn one day.”

Just as human parents soften with successive children, though, Kapuki let Romeo, her second calf, nurse until the zoo separated them around 22 months.

Lincoln Park Zoo’s new black rhino calf weighed around 60 pounds at birth and took her first steps just an hour and a half after being born. Credit: Lincoln Park Zoo

More Than A Notes App Baby Name List 

Now that the calf is born, the zoo’s naming committee will begin selecting a name for the animal. Unlike past animal names — like that of Bushman, Chicago’s beloved gorilla — a group of donors, volunteers and staff will vet potential monikers to ensure they “hold up to a designated level of cultural sensitivity,” said Anna Cieslik, the zoo’s public relations and communications manager. 

The calf may be named after real people, her history or the species’ native habitat. Sometimes, field partners who speak languages indigenous to the animal’s habitat will also contribute, avoiding names that trivialize or anthropomorphize the animals.

“We build compassion, empathy towards the species that we work with [by] basing it on the facts that we know and not on the assumptions we’re labeling them with,” Kutilek said.

Taking Baby Steps 

The baby rhino will feed on antibody-rich colostrum from her mother in her first weeks. Kapuki’s milk will change to accommodate the calf’s development, with high sugars for energy and rapid growth. Still, even drinking “low-fat milk,” the calf will gain two-to-three pounds per day, inching toward the 3,000-pound weights of her parents. 

The newborn couldn’t regulate her temperature for her first week of life, instead having to huddle against her mother for warmth. Other milestones moved much faster: In less than two hours, the calf took her first steps. Now just over 2 weeks old, the calf has been playing with her mother, but she is not approaching care staff yet, a behavior that is considered another early milestone, as “Kapuki is still very protective,” Cieslik said Wednesday.

Born without horns — a biological blessing for her laboring mother — the calf will start showing visible buds once it’s a month or two old, the calf’s caretakers said. Staff and volunteers will excitedly be on the lookout for such milestones.

“When you have a baby rhino, you don’t get a lot of work done,” Bobko said. “You spend a lot of time just enjoying the antics. There’s nothing more joyful, quite honestly.”

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