{"id":208740,"date":"2025-10-08T09:23:20","date_gmt":"2025-10-08T09:23:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/208740\/"},"modified":"2025-10-08T09:23:20","modified_gmt":"2025-10-08T09:23:20","slug":"fort-worth-zoos-new-baby-elephant-now-has-a-name-and-its-very-texan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/208740\/","title":{"rendered":"Fort Worth Zoo\u2019s new baby elephant now has a name, and it\u2019s very Texan"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Fort Worth Zoo\u2019s new baby elephant now has a name, after the public cast more than 18,000 votes for their favorite.<\/p>\n

The female Asian elephant calf born on Aug. 18 will be named Lady Bird, a tribute to former first lady Lady Bird Johnson of Texas.<\/p>\n

Though she\u2019s less than two months old now, Lady Bird weighs in at 320 pounds and \u201cis showing great signs of confidence and curiosity, venturing off on her own, but never out of sight from Mom,\u201d a zoo spokesperson said Tuesday.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The Fort Worth Zoo is inviting the public to help name the new member of the Asian elephant herd. The female calf was born to mother Bluebonnet and father Romeo on Aug. 18, 2025. Voting on a name for the new little one begins Friday, Sept. 26, 2025, on the zoo\u2019s website.<\/p>\n

The zoo held a naming contest with three choices, all of them related to Texas wildflowers in honor of the elephant\u2019s 27-year-old mother Bluebonnet, who was the first elephant born at the Fort Worth Zoo.<\/p>\n

The two other choices were Yellow Rose, or Rosie, after the folk song \u201cThe Yellow Rose of Texas,\u201d and Black-eyed Susan, or Susie, after the Texas native wildflower. Lady Bird Johnson, of course, is the reason why Texas highways are so colorful during the spring and summer. She was devoted to preserving, cultivating and displaying native plants and landscapes.<\/p>\n

In 1982, Johnson and actress Helen Hayes founded what\u2019s now the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center in Austin.<\/p>\n

Meet Lady Bird, the Fort Worth Zoo\u2019s baby elephant<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, back at the zoo, visitors to the Elephant Springs habitat<\/a> can catch a glimpse of Lady Bird from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. daily.<\/p>\n

The zoo says Lady Bird is \u201cnavigating her trunk well and can often be seen copying the trunk movements of the other female adults in the herd.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lady Bird is the ninth member of the zoo\u2019s herd of Asian elephants.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The newest addition to the Fort Worth Zoo\u2019s Asian elephant herd stays close to her mother, Bluebonnet, at just one day old. The female calf was born Aug. 18 and can now be seen daily at the zoo\u2019s Elephant Springs habitat from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.<\/p>\n

The calf is the sixth elephant to be born at the Fort Worth Zoo. She joins big brother Brazos, born in October 2021, and half-brother Travis, born in February 2023.<\/p>\n

Bluebonnet\u2019s first calf, Bowie, was sent to the Oklahoma City Zoo in 2022 to help grow their herd. Bowie recently sired a calf there, making Fort Worth Zoo elephant matriarch Rasha a great-grandmother.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Fort Worth Zoo\u2019s new baby elephant now has a name, after the public cast more than 18,000…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":208741,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[58657,55376,119599,119600,119601,79,1022,201],"class_list":{"0":"post-208740","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-asian-elephant","9":"tag-baby-elephant","10":"tag-fort-worth-zoo","11":"tag-lady-bird","12":"tag-lady-bird-johnson","13":"tag-science","14":"tag-texas","15":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208740","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208740"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208740\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/208741"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}