Romping, Hay-Eating Filled This Rhino's First Birthday

Waking up to a box brimming with hay, the sort of hay that is perfect for snacking, on the morning of your first birthday?

Well, we humans prefer to smash our cake and spread frosting all over our high chair trays, as is adorable tradition.

But if you're a southern white rhino marking the important milestone? It's all about munching on your favorite dried grasses.

And Edward, a southern white rhino, did just that at San Diego Zoo Safari Park on July 28.

Keepers threw the (literally) bouncing baby a birthday party, and the youngster frolicked around while exploring the delicious and nutritious treats placed inside his habitat at the park's Nikita Kahn Rhino Rescue Center.

There's much to celebrate when it comes to this handsome fellow: Edward was conceived through artificial insemination, a beacon of hope in the world of animal conservation.

The park shared more on Edward's extraordinary beginnings: "He was the conservation organization’s first rhino born following hormone-induced ovulation and artificial insemination," revealed the team at San Diego Zoo Safari Park.

Jaimie Wells

"Artificial insemination of southern white rhinos has rarely been successful in the past; there have been only two successful artificial insemination births of a southern white rhino in North America­—Edward and female calf Future, also born at the Safari Park, to mom Amani, on Nov. 21, 2019."

"The artificial insemination and successful birth of Edward represented a critical step in the organization’s ongoing work to develop the scientific knowledge required to genetically recover the northern white rhino, a distant subspecies of the southern white rhino."

There are two northern white rhinos remaining on earth, and both are female.

To read more about Edward and the southern white rhinos at the park, romp in this direction, with all the excitement of a young rhino on his first birthday, now.