March 18. What could be cuter than a baby… zebra? rhino? elephant? warthog? This is the time of year when baby animals are born because the rainy season begins in March and there will be plenty of grass and water. As we drove around doing our work today, we saw lots of babies. We saw an elephant that was probably less than a week old. You’d be amazed at how little a baby elephant is—so cute! We saw a baby Black Rhino with its keeper (they have a couple orphan rhinos here). We saw warthogs with their babies trailing behind them, all with their little tails straight up in the air. And of course, lots of zebra foals.

When we do our zebra counts, we always try to record how many male and female zebras we see, and whether they are adults or foals. The foals are broken down into 3 age groups: 0-3 months old, 3-6 months old, and 6-12 months old. Then there are two categories of juveniles: 1 year olds and 2 year olds. We are trying to learn to recognize the differences, and it’s very tricky! Baby zebras are brown and white instead of black and white, and they’re very fuzzy. As they get older, they gradually turn black and white and lose that fuzziness. So we look for those changes, as well comparing their size to that of an adult.

By recording the ages of the foals seen, scientists are able to get a sense of their survival rate. For instance, if a lot of foals are recorded in the 0-3 month category, but then three or four months later few 3-6 months old are seen, the scientists would conclude that those foals had died or been killed by predators. We hope that all the little Grevy’s we’ve seen will grow up and have little zebras of their own!