With nearly a week of spring technically left, the zoo still has fluffy spring babies to see. An Asian wild horse was born May 24, and over Memorial Day weekend, the trumpeter swans who live on our lake had cygnets. Last spring, I tried in vain to get a clear baby-swan shot. Last week, my luck improved.
The challenge was to get the adults’ faces in the picture, since swans spend so much time browsing for food with their heads underwater, tails pointing skyward. To maximize their reach in browsing, their necks are as long as their bodies: on average, nearly 60 inches each. At 20 to 30 pounds, trumpeters are the largest swan species. Now about three weeks old, this cygnet will be fully feathered at about two months old; a month after that, it will be able to fly. The zoo has released 165 swans into the wild, through its trumpeter swan restoration project participation. But some of them like the zoo’s sheltered lake so much, they eventually come home.
The newest member of the Asian wild horse exhibit is a few days older than the cygnets, but just as cute:
They’re also known as Przewalski’s horses (or in zoo shorthand, P-horses), after the Russian explorer (first name: Nicolai) who first informed the West of their existence in the late 1800s. (The Brookfield Zoo, which I recently visited, also has them, along with a helpful sign explaining the pronunciation: “Shevalski.”)
If not for captive-breeding programs in zoos, Asian wild horses would be extinct. In the mid-1960s, there were none left in the wild. But as with trumpeter swans in Minnesota, reintroduction efforts have restored a population to Mongolia, their last native stronghold. And as with many endangered species, humans have been their greatest threat: from hunters to farmers who (understandably) repurpose the land for crops or domestic grazing. In a nicely ironic twist, though, it’s also humans who’ve helped bring P-horses back from the brink.