PREVIEW

Over the holiday season staff at Toronto Zoo received one of the most remarkable gifts of all - a white rhino calf! On the morning of Thursday, 28 December 2023, mum Sabi gave birth to her first calf - giving staff the perfect ‘White Rhino Christmas’. Conception was a significant challenge for her due to a longer than usual ovulation cycle and fertility reducing with age. Toronto Zoo Wildlife Care and Reproductive Science teams were thrilled that the breeding introductions with white rhino male Tom in summer 2022 were successful. This is the second calf sired by the 15-year-old rhino. His first calf, Theo, was born December 24, 2017, and left Toronto in late 2021. A white rhino’s gestation period lasts approximately 16 months - meaning staff had a long time to care for Sabi throughout her pregnancy. White rhinos in the wild are listed as Near Threatened on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species. There are fewer than 16,000 left in the wild, with numbers currently declining due to habitat loss and the continued increase in poaching for their horn for the illegal wildlife trade. In honour of this significant birth, the Toronto Zoo Wildlife Conservancy has created the Wilding Rhino Conservation Fund to help protect wild rhino populations.