Nashville Zoo welcomes extraordinarily uncommon aardvark calf | EUROtoday

The Nashville Zoo welcomed some tiny new additions after its first-ever aardvark calf was born on the facility on New Year’s Day.

On Monday, the Nashville Zoo introduced the delivery of a child aardvark — referred to as a calf — that weighed roughly 4 kilos and was described as being “roughly the size of a rolling pin.” Aardvark births in zoos are uncommon — the final aardvark born in a zoo was born in 2024.

The calf is the offspring of two of the zoo’s aardvarks, named Winsol and Karanga.

According to the park, Karanga — the calf’s mom — and the infant are each doing nicely.

“Karanga and the calf are doing well and are being closely monitored by our animal care team in a behind-the-scenes area,” the park mentioned in a Facebook submit.

There are solely 33 aardvarks residing in American Zoological Association-accredited zoos. The calf is the thirty fourth aardvark in an AZA-accredited zoo, and the primary to be born since 2024.

Aardvarks residing in zoos enable researchers the chance to check the usually elusive animals.

“In the wild, aardvarks are difficult to study because they are a nocturnal, burrowing species,” Nashville Zoo’s Curator of Behavioral Husbandry Jac Menish said in a statement to The Tennessean.

Menish said the calf’s parents are both “ambassador animals” at the zoo, meaning they have a “lot of keeper interplay, together with hands-on care and leash coaching.”

“This has allowed us to assemble beneficial details about their breeding behaviors and being pregnant,” he said. “Periodic ultrasounds had been performed as soon as the being pregnant was confirmed, and our keeper crew started a nonstop child watch to watch indicators of labor and supply.”

It’s presently unclear if the infant aardvark will in the end keep on the zoo or be transferred to a different facility. According to the Tennessean, zoo officers mentioned the aardvark will possible finally be moved to a different facility to pair with a mate to help additional development among the many aardvark inhabitants.