{"id":847247,"date":"2026-09-14T07:50:15","date_gmt":"2026-09-14T07:50:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/847247\/"},"modified":"2026-09-14T07:50:15","modified_gmt":"2026-09-14T07:50:15","slug":"chaos-potatoes-born-at-zoo-weigh-less-than-a-pound-but-are-related-to-elephants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/847247\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;Chaos potatoes&#8217; born at zoo weigh less than a pound but are related to elephants"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#8216;Chaos potatoes&#8217; born at zoo weigh less than a pound but are related to elephants<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/1789372215_391_author_avatar.png\" width=\"48\" height=\"48\" alt=\"Default author avatar\" loading=\"lazy\"\/><\/p>\n<p data-node-id=\"1\">Reminiscent of elephants, but weighing less than 10 pounds? They&#8217;re real, and they&#8217;re nicknamed &#8220;chaos potatoes.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p data-node-id=\"2\">These three rock hyrax pups \u2014 Russ, Spud and Jackie \u2014 were born this summer at the Chester Zoo in England and just passed their first vet checks. <\/p>\n<p data-node-id=\"3\">While small in stature, they have a supersized cousin. Hyraxes are related to elephants, with tusk-like upper teeth. They&#8217;re native to Africa and the Middle East.<\/p>\n<p data-node-id=\"4\">\u201cThe pups arrived to parents Maris and Albert and amazingly, given their tiny (350 grams) [12 ounces] size, their closest living relatives are elephants! Keepers say their unusual family tree provides insights into the surprising twists evolution can take,\u201d the zoo wrote in a press release.<\/p>\n<p data-node-id=\"5\">Currently, the pups weigh less than a pound each, but they could get to around 8 pounds when fully grown. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"&#8216;Chaos potatoes&#8217; born at zoo weigh less than a pound but are related to elephants Reminiscent of elephants,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":847248,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[53720,1147,45969,358434,42796,358433,41999,251457,358432,79,201],"class_list":["post-847247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-animal-news","tag-animals","tag-baby-animals","tag-chaos-potato","tag-cute","tag-hyrax","tag-ldnd","tag-pups","tag-rock-hyrax","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/847247","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=847247"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/847247\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/847248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=847247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=847247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=847247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}