New Babies
New babies are always welcome here. They boost the numbers of our endangered species and are always loved by our visitors.
Meisie the Western Lowland gorilla arrived in 2010 and has made amazing progress. We watched being carried round by her mum, Miliki, learning to crawl and, more recently, pottering round the enclosure by herself and being a nuisance to dad, Bukavu!
Her progress is similar to that of a human toddler and she, too, has tantrums and stamps her feet!
Although, in the future, Meisie may have to leave the group to join another collection, we look forward to seeing her develop into a confident, healthy, mature gorilla here at Blackpool.
Babies abound, literally, in Wallaby Walkabout! Kangaroos and wallabies mix happily in this spacious walkthrough enclosure and the babies' progress is followed by several of our regular visitors.
Wallabies and kangaroos are marsupials and carry their babies in their pouch. The baby, or joey, is not considered "born" until it's out of the pouch full time.
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Another welcome addition to a critically endangered species is Benni, a male Hartmann's zebra foal, born to Mum, Bette, and father, Fernando in 2012. He's a strong, active colt and will eventually leave us to join another group for breeding purposes. As Fernando is the only Hartmanns stallion in the UK, Benni is particularly valuable to the survival of the species. Tebogo, Benni's half brother, born in 2010, left the park in 2012 for a new life at Landau Zoo in Germany where he will be allowed to mature before joining a breeding herd of his own on direction of the Stud Book Keeper.
2012 saw the arrival of a second Western Lowland gorilla to mum, Njema, half sister of Miliki. The baby was born on the 8th November and it's not known at this stage if it's a male or female.
