A Cheyenne Mountain Zoo Encore: Baby Animals

tanjabrittonwriter 57 Comments

While the list of topics a majority of people can agree on seems to be forever-shrinking, I think most of us will acknowledge that we are enamored of baby animals. When my husband and I finally returned to our local Cheyenne Mountain Zoo in May 2021, after a two- or three-year hiatus, I was inspired to share some of my impressions with you: Welcome to the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, Visit Africa at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, and Come See Asia and Australia at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo.

During our May visit, we saw a few baby animals, but when the zoo’s July newsletter informed me of additional births, some of them unforeseen, I scheduled a return trip. I had three goals that morning of my visit, and much to my delight, all were met.

We had caught a glimpse of one-month-old Ring-tailed Lemur baby, “Maky,” clinging to her mother, “Rogue,” in May, but the lemur family had since grown. The male lemur, “Hercules,” had also connected with another female, “Allagash,” who gave birth on July 11 to not one, but two babies–twins! They were only two weeks old when I met them, and if you look closely, you might detect one of them in the featured photo above, as well as in the first of the three following photos. You should see them both in the third photo.

To enlarge a photo, click on it. To read its caption, hover your cursor over it. 

Allagash with one of her twins visible, and two other adult lemurs
Rogue with Maky clinging to her back, with one additional adult
Allagash with both her twins

Occasionally, one hears about a pregnancy that goes unnoticed, and this phenomenon is not limited to humans. To say that hippos are hefty animals is no lie. It’s not difficult to imagine that a baby bump might go unnoticed. When the keepers of the Nile hippos at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo noticed restless behavior in one of the females, “Zambesi,” she didn’t keep them in suspense for long, and, on July 20, gave birth to a baby boy. Zambesi and the male adult hippo, “Biko” had hit if off when they first met last fall, but nobody knew if their romantic hippo trysts had led to the desired result. I was thrilled to catch a few brief glimpses of the yet-unnamed infant as he surfaced next to his mother in between periods of rest.

Zambesi with her son
Zambesi with her son

At my third stop, “Gidgee,” the Red-necked Wallaby, was hanging out on the grass of her enclosure. We knew about the joey in her pouch in May, but at that point it was too young to emerge. About a week before my July visit, the zoo keepers had seen parts of the Gidgee’s son in the opening of the pouch. I was happy when he took a brief peek at the outside world while I was there. With a little imagination it’s possible to see his nose and one of his eyes in the second photo. The rapidly-growing boy has since left the pouch, but I haven’t yet made it back to the zoo for a follow-up photo.

Gidgee’s pouch shows parts of her joey
“Peeakboo”

With these endearing photos of our zoo’s latest baby animals, I will step away from the blog for a month or two and wish all of you good health and happy times.

57 thoughts on “A Cheyenne Mountain Zoo Encore: Baby Animals”

    • Hi Neil,
      I had to check the zoo’s website, and at 3 weeks, the baby weighed 115 pounds. Not sure how much it weighed at birth, since the keepers didn’t interact with it for several days once it was clear that its mother was doing a great job taking care of it.

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  17. Seeing your baby hippo, I wondered how its size compared with the pygmy hippos in Liberia. I found that pygmy adults weigh between 300-600 pounds, while these reach 3,500 to 9,920 pounds for a male and 3,000 for a female. Gracious!

    The lemurs are delightful. They remind me of our ring-tailed cats, but they’re much cuter!

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    • I just learned from the zoo’s website that the baby hippo now weighs in at 160# and is gaining a pound a day. I hope to go back for another visit soon to get another look before it gets too big. And since the lemurs share an enclosure with them, I will get to enjoy their cute faces once again. 🙂

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  18. So cute, all of them! Da hast du ein paar tolle Momente mit der Kamera festhalten können. Die Lemuren sind zu niedlich, aber auch Nilpferdkinder sind sooo süß! Toll! Ich wünsche dir eine gute Auszeit und freue mich, dann wieder von dir zu hören! Herzliche Grüße
    Almuth

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  20. Your zoo posts have been very enjoyable, Tanja. Last week we visited the Philadelphia Zoo. They have mesh trails above ground that would let some animals (big cats, apes etc.) roam around the zoo, and I thought that was a fantastic idea. The only downside was that some of the animals were missing from their cages — they had gone on their own explorations. 😀 But it’s great to know the animals are having fun too. 🙂

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    • Thank you, Nirmala.
      The trails at the Philadelphia Zoo sound like a good innovation for the animals. Definitely much better than the small cages that used to be the norm in which the animals could only walk around in circles.

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