{"id":219704,"date":"2025-10-12T18:03:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-12T18:03:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/219704\/"},"modified":"2025-10-12T18:03:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-12T18:03:11","slug":"endangered-baby-black-rhino-makes-its-debut-at-cleveland-zoo-nbc-chicago","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/219704\/","title":{"rendered":"Endangered baby black rhino makes its debut at Cleveland zoo \u2013 NBC Chicago"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A critically endangered <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nbcchicago.com\/tag\/animals\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">rhino<\/a> made its public debut Friday at a Cleveland zoo, dashing about its enclosure and giving a boost to the endangered species.<\/p>\n<p>The 120-pound eastern black rhino was born earlier this month to 22-year-old mother Kibibbi and 25-year-old father Forrest at the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo. The zoo has a long history of caring for the species, which has fewer than 583 adults in the wild, alongside global partners.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe is very playful, runs around, gets the zoomies, so it\u2019s very fun to take care of him, especially when they\u2019re this age,\u201d animal keeper Stefanie Titterington said as the calf explored the Daniel Maltz Rhino Reserve.<\/p>\n<p>Alex Budinger, a zoo visitor, was thrilled to catch a glimpse of the rhino that has not yet been named. The zoo is holding a contest for guests to choose from one of three names \u2014 Makena, Kenza or Kamari.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re zoo members. We come here all the time, so we\u2019re very excited that there\u2019s a new baby to come and check out and we thought it was a great day to come out and see the rhino,&#8221; Budinger said. &#8220;It\u2019s adorable and we enjoy coming and seeing it do some enrichment and chew up some pumpkins.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>South Africa has more than 2,000 of the 6,700 black rhinos left in the wild or in reserves and 12,000 to 13,000 of the world\u2019s 15,000 remaining southern white rhinos, which are now listed as near threatened after a turnaround. Those two species are only found in the wild in Africa. South Africa has a pivotal place in saving them but also is the epicenter of rhino poaching that is linked to organized crime.<\/p>\n<p>Eastern black rhinos are one of several subspecies of black rhinos.<\/p>\n<p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tA Pennsylvania man\u2019s emotional support alligator made headlines after being spotted at a Walmart. The store has since banned the animal, but the owner says she\u2019s welcome almost everywhere else.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A critically endangered rhino made its public debut Friday at a Cleveland zoo, dashing about its enclosure and&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":219705,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[1147,6454,79,201],"class_list":{"0":"post-219704","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-animals","9":"tag-ohio","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219704","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=219704"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219704\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/219705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=219704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=219704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}