Sensational event took place in the Budapest Zoo at dawn on February 14: long-awaited baby proboscidean was born.
The newly-born Valentine’s Day calf already suckles milk from its mother’s breast in the Budapest Zoo. This is very important since the baby did not succeed at first and could only get the essential milk with human help. In the first 24 hours the baby did not find its mother’s breasts at all, therefore caregivers and veterinarians milked the elephant mom called Angele and fed the baby elephant with the milk exerted. Since then such feeding happened more times and fortunately it turned out that the baby can be called to the nursing bottle.
The fate of the little elephant has been followed by many in recent days. People have asked information about its status and hoped that everything would turn to be ok. The Zoo still asks for the patience of the visitors: the Elephant House remains closed as long as calm environment is required for the mom and her baby.
In the history of the Budapest Zoo and Botanic Garden five elephant calves were born, the last one on May 10 in 1961. Since then in the past half century however not a single Asian elephant was born in Hungary until now.
