Baby kiwis, fluffy sheep, and baby otters. Here's the animal news that made waves in New Zealand in October!
Rare kiwi fruit gives birth to baby
Kiwis, the flightless bird that is the national bird of New Zealand, are actually divided into five species. The most abundant is the brown kiwi found in the North Island. The largest is the great spotted kiwi, and the smallest is the little spotted kiwi . The tokoeka lives on the remote island of Scituate Island. And the one we'll introduce here is the rowi .
Rowi is the rarest kiwi, recognized as a separate species from the brown kiwi in 2003. It is said that there are only about 600 of them left in the wild.
A baby lowi kiwi was born at a shelter, and a photo of it sleeping peacefully just eight days after it was born was released.
This is Brownie, he's 8 days old and a rare Rowi kiwi chick. Rowi are the rarest of the five species of Kiwi. This snap from the West Coast Wildlife Center was too cute not to share 🐣. https://t.co/RjordQap6H pic.twitter.com/nZ6IOFVsws
— New Zealand 🇳🇿 (@PureNewZealand) October 7, 2020
The baby Lowi hatched at about 300 to 400 grams. It took about a month for it to hatch, and the whole facility was tense for a week from when the shell first cracked until it fully hatched, with people worrying about whether the baby would be born safely.
This is a photo of a beautiful belly button on the second day after birth.
There are many wildlife conservation facilities in New Zealand, but the number of kiwis is decreasing year by year. The New Zealand government has announced a budget for a conservation plan and is carrying out a national project.
The fluffy sheep is finally sheared
On a farm in Gisborne, located in the northeast of the North Island, Gisborne the sheep was shorn for the first time in five years, yielding a whopping 13kg of wool.
This Gigi had been on the run for five years before he was finally caught and hunted!
First of all, there was an incredible amount of hair!
"Although it didn't set a new record for the amount of wool shorn from a single sheep, the longest wool was 58cm, 1cm longer than the previous record, making it the longest in the world.
The runaway sheep, Gizzy, was a fluffy monster. He had been hiding in the forest for many years, and was finally captured last month. Gizzy will not return to the forest, but will live a leisurely life on the farm.
I wouldn't turn Gizzy into sausage.
Faulkner commented.
Five otters born at Auckland Zoo
Five baby otters have been born at Auckland Zoo and have been weighed for the first time.
These five are still too fluffy to go in the water. Also, their gender won't be clear until they get a little bigger, so they don't have names yet. One of the zookeepers describes them as "fluffy sausages."
The baby otters are not yet able to move around on their own, so they are carried by the parent otter. The father otter is very active in raising the otters, bringing food to the mother otter and looking after his older siblings. The older otters also seem to take good care of the baby otters.
Thirteen animals is a large family to live in one zoo, so the baby otters will eventually be split off into several groups and relocated to zoos somewhere in New Zealand and Australia, but for the time being we will likely be able to see them playing together as a cute family.
