Endangered Black Rhino 'Rudy' Arrives At Denver Zoo
DENVER (CBS4) - The Denver Zoo welcomed a 22-year-old male black rhinoceros named Rudy on Tuesday.
He's the first of his endangered species to be housed at the zoo since the passing of Mshindi last September.
Rudy (short for Rudisha) will live in the pachyderm building, across from Mahali the hippopotamus. It will be closed temporarily while the rhino gets acquainted to his surroundings and clears a quarantine period.
He was born in August 1993 at a zoo in Kansas, where he lived until moving to Oklahoma City Zoo in May 2012. There, he fathered two female offspring.
Black rhinos are critically endangered due to the threat of poaching in addition to a slow reproductive rate. There were an estimated 100,000 of the species in 1960, but today there are less than 5,000.
Many populations in the wild have been decimated as poaching has recently increased dramatically.
Black rhinoceroses living in North America have a life expectancy of about 18 years, and the Denver Zoo said they are happy to give Rudy a home as he enters his golden years.