Rhino drowns at Dutch zoo in mating mishap

A female rhinoceros drowned at a zoo in the Netherlands after a first date with a brand modern male went tragically unfriendly, the zoo acknowledged on Friday.

Elena modified into “startled” on Thursday by the advent of a white rhino named Limpopo on the Wildlands zoo in the jap metropolis of Emmen advance the German border.

After a scramble the exhausted female slipped accurate into a waterhole, at which level zookeepers lured the bull rhino away from her.

“Unfortunately, this reduction got right here too gradual for Elena and he or she had already drowned,” the zoo acknowledged in a press launch.

The 19-one year-former Limpopo had arrived on the park in early September from one other Dutch zoo the attach he sired three offspring as fragment of a European breeding programme.

The male and the Wildlands zoo’s two female rhinos, sisters Elena and Zahra, started attending to perceive every diversified by smelling and seeing every diversified in separate pens.

The “most pleasurable” fragment, the zoo acknowledged, modified into planned for Thursday morning, earlier than traffic arrived, when Limpopo modified into allowed into the distance the attach the females were grazing.

“From that moment on it turned careworn out: both girls were startled by the male and somewhat than striking him in his attach of living together, they both ran off,” it acknowledged.

“As a result, Limpopo gave scramble. He regarded notably focused on Elena, because she modified into the closest to him.”

Every animals regarded exhausted after 15 minutes, and Elena slipped accurate into a shallow pool of water, landed on her facet and modified into unable to face up, the zoo acknowledged.

Caretakers were unable to stop her drowning.

Limpopo’s previous problems

Shy zoo vet Job Stumpel paid tribute to the “beautiful, candy, proper and serene” Elena

“You settle on to soar over there and pick her head above water nonetheless you would possibly now not. Rhinos usually are now not simplest very harmful, nonetheless they also weigh nearly 2,000 kilos (4,409 pounds),” he told AD newspaper.

“We raced to it with a shovel and chased the male away with it, so we would possibly perchance perchance catch to the female, on the different hand it modified into too gradual.”

The zoo acknowledged such an introduction “on the general requires intervention, nonetheless never earlier than has one been deadly”.

Limpopo had been moved from a German zoo six years prior to now because he “didn’t treat the female there properly”, the Brabants Dagblad newspaper acknowledged.

In his most most unique dwelling, the Beekse Bergen safari park advance Tilburg in the southern Netherlands, he modified into a “confirmed breeder” living with a herd of six females.

The southern white rhino is listed as “advance threatened” by the World Union for the Conservation of Nature, with 10,080 animals in existence.

Rhinos are killed for their horns, highly prized all the contrivance thru Asia for worn and medicinal beneficial properties.

Nonetheless breeding them is sophisticated, as a female simplest gives birth to a calf as soon as every three to four years, after a 16-month pregnancy, the zoo acknowledged.

© 2021 AFP