March 4 is the UK premiere of Meet the Sloths on Animal Planet. More importantly, it gives us an opportunity to post this adorable video.

Singer and reality TV star Bret Michaels had a photo op with Busch Gardens’ own “hair rocker,” Harry the sloth, on Sunday at the Bands, Brew & BBQ festival. Harry, a two-toed sloth, is the most popular member of Busch Gardens’ Animal Ambassadors team.

In the wild, sloths inhabit the rainforests of Central and South America.  They have a symbiotic relationship with algae, which grows on their fur. The green tint of the algae helps camouflage the sloths among the trees.

Ratu, a rare Sumatran rhino, is pregnant!

In February 2010, we posted about Ratu, a rare Sumatran rhino, being pregnant. Unfortunately, she miscarried after two months. However, the Sumatran Rhino Sanctuary in Indonesia has announced that Ratu is pregnant again! Currently, she is in her eleventh month of gestation. Her pregnancy will most likely last another four or five months.

To help prevent Ratu from miscarrying again, sanctuary staff give her a hormone supplement daily. Within the sanctuary, she is free to roam and graze in a large forested area with natural plants and mud, just as she would in the wild.

Ratu was originally a wild rhino. She was taken into the Sumatran Rhino Sanctuary, which offers 250 acres of protected land, after coming in contact with villagers nearby. Andalas, who mated with Ratu last year to produce this recent pregnancy, was a captively-bred rhino from the Cincinnati Zoo.

Sumatran rhinos are in grave danger of becoming extinct. According to the International Rhino Foundation:

The Sumatran rhino is one of the world’s most critically endangered species, numbering no more than 200 individuals in Indonesia and Malaysia. The species is seriously threatened by the continuing loss of its tropical forest habitat and hunting pressure from poachers, who kill rhinos for their valuable horns. Every Sumatran rhino birth – in the wild, in a zoo or in a special sanctuary – represents hope for the survival of this species, which runs the risk of going extinct by the end of this century.

Learn more at the International Rhino Foundation website.

The first baby giraffe of 2012 was born at Busch Gardens. The female giraffe calf measures 6 feet 2 inches tall and weighs 176 pounds. She and her mother are currently being monitored by zoo staff. They will rejoin the herd in three months.

Busch Gardens welcomed a new female giraffe to their herd.

Slurp! The newborn giraffe gets a nice cleaning by her mother.

Just a newborn, the female giraffe measures 6 feet 2 inches tall!

To learn more about giraffes, see Animal Fact Guide’s article: Giraffe.

Anne-Marie Verbruggen places a contact lens in the left eye of Win Thida, a 44-year-old Asian elephant at the Artis Zoo in Amsterdam. Photo by Artis Zoo.

Did you know that contact lenses are not just for people?  At the Artis Zoo in Amsterdam, Netherlands, veterinarian Anne-Marie Verbruggen fitted an Asian elephant with a special contact lens.  The 44-year-old elephant, named Win Thida, suffered from a scratched cornea after fighting with another elephant.  The contact lens will protect the eye while it heals.

This was the first time Verbruggen fitted an elephant with a contact lens, however, she has had experience giving horses contact lenses.  With the elephant, the challenge was with the massive size and weight of the animal.  According to Verbruggen, “Elephants can’t lie down for long before their immense weight impairs their breathing, so I used a ladder to get close enough. It wasn’t ideal, but it worked. She seemed happier straight away.”

For more information, see Spiegel Online.

Did you know you can FedEx a panda? On January 15, two pandas named Huan Huan and Yuan Zi, who were born at the famous Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding, boarded a specially-chartered Boeing 777F flight known as the “FedEx Panda Express.”

During the non-stop flight to Paris, France (5,489 miles away), the pair of pandas passed the time snoozing and eating bamboo in custom-built enclosures. They were accompanied by a Chinese veterinarian and animal handler as well as the managing director from ZooParc de Beauval, their new home.

(Click image for larger PDF of the infographic.)

FedEx Express has a long history of transporting rare and delicate cargo, including other pandas, polar bears, white tigers, elephants, penguins, mountain lions, gorillas, eagles, and even a 13-foot tiger shark used in filming the movie “Jaws.”

For more information about Huan Huan and Yuan Zi’s trip, see the FedEx Blog.

To learn more about pandas, see Animal Fact Guide’s article, Giant Panda.

Two Amur (or Siberian) tiger cubs and mother Marta went on display at the Toledo Zoo in Ohio. The cubs were born on September 26, 2011.

Amur tigers are the largest subspecies of tiger, averaging  about 3.3 m (11 ft.) in length, with a tail measuring 1 m (3 ft.). Adult male tigers can weigh up to 320 kg (700 lb.), while female tigers are significantly smaller, weighing up to 180 kg (400 lb.).

To learn more about Amur tigers, see Animal Fact Guide’s article Siberian Tiger.

To learn more about the Amur tiger cubs, see NorthwestOhio.com.

In the wee hours of New Year’s Day, the Lowry Park Zoo in Tampa welcomed a new baby Malayan tapir.  The female calf is healthy, weighing about 15 pounds (and gaining).

Baby tapirs have a spotted pattern to help camouflage them from predators. Eventually, the baby’s spotted coat will fade to a solid black and white pattern. In the wild, Malayan tapirs are endangered, inhabiting the rainforests of Southeast Asia.  Their population is threatened by human activity like deforestation and illegal trade.

For more information, see:
WTSP.com
Lowry Park Zoo Facebook page

There were so many adorable baby animals born in 2011.  Here are a few highlights:

Baldest Baby: This baby aardvark was born at Busch Gardens Tampa on April 10, 2011. He was hand-reared by zookeepers because his mother was neglecting him.

Oldest Mother: Five Santa Cruz Galapagos tortoise hatchlings were born on November 15  to a century-old tortoise in a South Carolina zoo after she hid the eggs from zookeepers for months.

Best Gremlin Impersonator: The Maryland Zoo in Baltimore welcomed a male baby Coquerel’s sifaka on November 12 and named him Nero. Sifakas are a kind of lemur who move by leaping through trees or side-hopping on the ground.

Roundest Face: A pair of red pandas were born at the Franklin Park Zoo in Boston, MA on July 4. In the wild, red pandas inhabit bamboo forests in China, the Himalyas, and Myanmar.

Unlikely Friends: An 8-week-old cheetah (born in February) was paired with a 16-week-old yellow lab at Busch Gardens Tampa. The two adolescents became great pals.

Most Smiley: A dolphin calf was born on July 26th at SeaWorld Orlando. Here he is bonding with his mother.

Whitest Kiwi: Two rare all-white kiwis were born this year at Pukaha Mount Bruce National Wildlife Center in New Zealand.  Manukura was born in May and was the first of its kind born in captivity.  Mauriora was born in December. The two white kiwis are North Island brown kiwis who carry a rare white gene. They are not albinos.

Hope you enjoyed our roundup of amazing animal babies of 2011. Happy New Year!

A new female baby giraffe arrived on Tuesday, December 27 at Busch Gardens Tampa Bay. The newborn measures 5 feet 7 inches and weighs 127 pounds. She was born to father Jafari and mother Tesa.  Tesa and the calf will be monitored for three months before joining the other free-roaming animals on Busch Gardens’ 65-acre Serengeti Plain habitat.