Hey girls and boys! I'm Abby Brown.
What is the tallest animal in the world?
I know you know this.
That's right, it's the giraffe.
And what is one of the biggest animals in the world?
I'm talking bulky and heavy, like thousands of pounds
heavy. I'll give you a hint. This animal has a horn
off the end of its nose.
It's a rhinoceros! You got it!
We're here at the zoo to meet these two amazing animals
and learn a little bit about conservation, which really
just means protecting them and their natural habitats.
Get ready to Go Wild with Iowa PBS and the Blank Park Zoo
as we encounter the tallest and one of the biggest animals
on Earth.
♪♪
Here are a few amazing animal facts for
you.
Giraffe have excellent eyesight and they can spot
predators like hyenas or lions from far away.
Pretty handy, right?
And when rhinos feel threatened their instinct
is not to run away, but to run directly at whatever
has scared them.
Can you even imagine?
Let's go meet these magnificent plant eaters
here at the Blank Park Zoo.
♪♪
Hi, my name is Anne and I'm from the
Blank Park Zoo and with me I have my very special
friends, the eastern black rhinos.
This is Ayana and her baby Kamara.
Did you know that Kamara just turned 1 this past
April?
These guys are called eastern black rhinos
because they roll in dark soil and dark mud that
gives them kind of that black look, it doesn't
have anything to do with their skin color, it has
to do with the soil that they roll and they wallow
in.
And they're a little bit different than a white
rhino because the soil color is a little bit
different in the region where the white rhinos
live.
Anne: Something else that you'll really notice about
them, which is cool, if you look at their top lip,
if you look at Ayana's top lip it is pointed and that
is called a prehensile lip.
And that lets her grab leaves and branches and
fruit in the wild and eat it.
And she is called the browser because she goes
after those branches and those leaves.
A white rhino, their top lip would be flat because
they're grazers and they like to eat grass.
So that is one of the ways that you can tell the
difference between a white rhino and a black rhino.
Anne: Other cool things about them, look at their
size.
Ayana is about 2500 pounds.
That is the size of a car.
And her baby, her baby right now at 1 year old is
just under 1000 pounds.
And at birth she weighed 100 pounds which is the
size of an elementary student.
♪♪
Anne: Look at her horns.
See how they're nice and big?
Those horns are made of keratin and it's a fibrous
material and it helps protect them.
So when a rhino gets startled in the wild, the
first thing they'll do is they charge and then
they'll investigate later.
So that is how they get their reputation, they're
actually quite docile animals by nature, but
just don't startle them because that is when they
will start to charge.
Anne: The other cool thing you can notice about is
their ears.
See how their ears are moving back and forth?
That's listening for any kind of danger or
predators.
So their ears will rotate all around just like
satellite dishes catching up sound all around them
to see what is going on.
And the mom, Ayana, she is very aware of everything
going on so that she can protect her baby, Kamara.
♪♪
Anne: Look at their feet.
Do you see how they have it looks like almost toes
on their feet and when they walk those toes, the
pads flatten out on the ground and that helps them
from sinking into the ground when they are
walking.
And of course they have little tails too.
And if you look at their tails, just like on a
horse, they'll use their tail to swat away bugs and
flies.
Did you know that rhinos are very intelligent
animals and at the zoo we can actually train them to
do different behaviors to help in their animal
welfare and their care?
They also make little sounds.
So the babies when they're young if they get nervous
or if they get scared they'll make a little call
calling for their mom.
And then mom, who is on high alert, knows that
they need to go over and protect their young.
(rhino call)
Anne: You might be wondering, how
much does the zoo feed these animals every single
day?
So we feed them about 50 pounds of food a day.
So if you think about that, that is like 200
cheeseburgers.
So 50 pounds of food.
Now, of course, rhinos don't eat cheeseburgers,
they prefer leaves and branches and we feed them
special pellets made just for rhinos and then lots
of vegetables and hay or different kinds of
grasses.
♪♪
Anne: Something else that is really cool
about them is they can live to be between 45 and
50 years old.
So Ayana right here, the mom, she's only going to
be 10 this year so she hopefully has a long life
ahead of her.
And the little baby just turned 1.
They have a long time to live with us and be with
us at the zoo.
Anne: Rhinos in the wild are endangered.
They're being hunted over and over again for their
horns.
Their horns really do not have a lot of value.
Some people think they can be used for medicine.
Some people like to make like handles for daggers
out of them as a sign of wealth.
But really, they do not have any medicinal value
to them at all and we want to make sure that these
rhinos are protected.
So at the Blank Park Zoo we work with the
International Rhino Foundation and we help
protect those animals in the wild so they can build
up their populations.
And right now our baby rhino, every rhino counts
because a baby is only born every two to three
years.
So the mom could be pregnant for 15 months,
which is over a year.
So they do not have babies very often.
So that is why we have to really protect them and
the Blank Park Zoo helps in doing that by having
these guys over here.
♪♪
Anne: My friend Shannon behind me is
feeding Jakobi.
Jakobi is a male giraffe and you can tell that he
is a male because he has the bumps on his head that
makes him really handsome to other giraffe.
Giraffe are the largest mammals in the world.
They can grow to be between 17 and 20 feet
tall.
Did you know that mammals all have fur?
And giraffe have fur just like every other mammal
but it's really short because they live in
Africa where it's warmer out.
The other thing that all mammals have is they all
have seven neck bones.
You have seven neck bones too and so do giraffe.
But look at the giraffe's neck, it's so much longer
than ours and their bones are just much bigger than
our bones but we both have the same number.
♪♪
Anne: The other thing that is really neat
is look at that long neck, that long neck can grow
six feet long.
That is the size of an adult human.
♪♪
Anne: Shannon is feeding Jakobi right there
and as she feeds him look at his really long tongue.
His tongue is a dark purple or a black color
and it can be 18 inches long.
Giraffe spend about 75% of their day eating leaves in
the wild.
So almost the entire day they eat leaves and they
only rest a little bit.
So they can stretch way up in the trees and they'll
wrap that tongue around a branch and pull all the
leaves off of it and that's how they eat.
♪♪
Anne: Giraffe have unique patterns.
No two giraffe is the same.
So if you look at their patterns on the side of
their body that is how you can tell them apart, just
like your own fingerprints that you have as unique to
you.
If you look at Jakobi's head, he has ossicones,
those are those big horns that stick up from his
head.
Every giraffe, both boys and girls, males and
females have those ossicones and that is to
serve as protection for them, especially when they
are browsing in the trees for those leaves, those
ossicones help protect their heads.
Anne: You can also notice his ears.
Look at those ears.
Giraffe are herbivores and they are prey species.
So predators will try and catch them and so they are
always on the lookout for predators.
And so those ears rotate around just like those big
satellite dishes listening for any danger that could
be nearby.
And when they hear danger they will start running.
And they can run really fast for short distances.
♪♪
Anne: How many hours a day do you sleep
at night?
Giraffe really don't sleep very much at all.
In fact, they will sleep for very, very, very short
times, just a few minutes at a time standing up.
Once in a while you'll see a giraffe can sit down but
their head is always upright with their long
neck and it's very difficult for them to
stand back up again.
That is why most of the time giraffe will always
stay standing and you'll always see them sleeping
when they're standing up.
♪♪
What a thrill that was!
Absolutely fascinating animals!
Thank you for Going Wild with Iowa PBS and
the Blank Park Zoo.
I'm Abby Brown.
And always remember to ask questions and wonder.
That's what science is all about.
♪♪