Dokkoon has given birth to a baby boy earlier today (8th December): Statement just released Congratulations Melbourne http://www.zoo.org.au/news/its-a-boy-0
Maybe make the CCTV feed available as a live online feed, so the entire world of zoo enthusiasts can be security guards. Maybe a text could be sent to the keeper only when a threshold number of 'report incident' has been received in a short period of time.
I just went down & visited the herd (eles & humans). I thought you might all be interested to hear that Num-Oi is extremely happy about the new bub. She's been happily trumpeting away. So nice to have a happy end to such a hideous week.
Is the baby an African elephant or an Asian elephant? re: Mandela being a favourite name. Surely they can save the name for an African animal, say the baby hippo at Werribee (if it's a male), in which case I would lean towards Madiba anyway.
Baby is an Asian Ele & I know they do usually prefer to use thai names. I think the closeness of his death has made them consider the similar characteristics between Mandela & elephants. I do like your idea about naming a Werribee animal after him though. The hippo's sex is still unknown at this stage & I'm guessing the ele will be out on display (& then publicly named) long before the hippo.
How so? On their Facebook page many people are asking for him to be named Mandela but the zoo chooses to use Thai names for their Asian elephants, so I would bet that Mandela would not be chosen.
I know that nobody has meant any harm, but the notion of naming an African animal after Nelson Mandela is really inappropriate and quite racist. Mandela spent his life fighting against the insinuation that African people were more akin to animals than to other human beings. Also very interested to know what possible similarity there is between an elephant and Nelson Mandela. Honestly...
You can almost guarantee there will baby african animals named Mandela in the coming year, at zoos around the world. Hix
Interesting. It never crossed my mind that naming an African baby animal in honour of Mandela was inappropriate or racist. Hmmm. I'll have to mull on that for a bit. My friend from Zimbabwe tells me that villages (tribes? Families?) have totems, and that his totem is the eland. Does anyone know if South Africa has a totem culture too? If Mandela had a totem, then naming a baby from that species after him might be appropriate.
I was at the media conference on Sunday Jabiru96 & they were talking about the name then. Just heard that the keepers are going to come up with a shortlist of names & then the public are going to vote.
They might relate it somehow to Nelson Mandela by using the Thai names of 'freedom', or 'peace' or something similar, but being an Asian elephant and keeping with tradition, they will never call him Mandela.
I must admit, I thought it would be strange for them to deviate from a Thai name. I really like your idea of "freedom" or "peace". Great idea in fact
