And things don’t seem so different at Whipsnade Zoo.
When 12-year-old Asian elephant Karishma and her eight-month-old George needed to be counted during the inventory, they obliged by raising their trunks.
With typical youthful enthusiasm, George also appeared to snap up elephant keeper Elizabeth Becker.
The elephants are among 200 animals being examined during the annual inventory that began this week at the zoo in Dunstable, Bedfordshire.
Other newcomers this year include two baby rhinos, five cheetahs, and 41 penguins.
Also on the clipboard will be two animals that the zoo staffs are delighted to see.
Beluki the Asian Rhino, will be seen with her baby Miracle after the keepers at Whipsnade personally raised the calf to save her life.
Miracle was a breech birth, which protruded to the bottom first, leaving her traumatized and unable to breastfeed normally.
Zoo staff, fearing for the little girl’s life, camped out in sleeping bags in the neighboring hay barn and took the rare step of intervening to breastfeed the calf with the vital colostrum she needed from local cows.
Keepers and veterinarians worked around for three days to monitor the calf’s condition as she fought to survive, and their efforts paid off when Miracle began to feed the calf herself from her mother.
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