Little Hoover was born back in September, but as is their wont, the zoo waited until this week to unveil him to the public. And for a while there, it didn’t even look like the baby anteater would make it this far: At first, his mother, Dora, wouldn’t nurse him. A first-time mother, it seemed she didn’t know how, so zookeepers were forced to stay nearby 24 hours a day to hand-nurse Hoover. Eventually, Dora figured out what to do, but then there was the problem that aardvarks are basically blind and extremely clumsy. “We were worried about stuff like her just rolling over on him,” Bronx Zoo director Jim Breheny told the Daily News. “This wasn’t going to be easy.” But everything turned out fine, and now Hoover is very friendly with humans, like a puppy. An adorable, snuggly-wuggly, hairless puppy with talonlike claws who licks ants directly out of the ground.
Baby aardvark at Bronx Zoo survives and thrives - with help from zookeepers [NYDN]
