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Thursday, March 28, 2024

With visitors away, zoo sees animal baby boom

Duration: 01:13s 0 shares 1 views

With visitors away, zoo sees animal baby boom
With visitors away, zoo sees animal baby boom

Peacocks, ostriches and baboons experienced an animal baby boom at the Qalqilya Zoo, a Palestinian business in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, while humans stayed away during the coronavirus outbreak.

This report produced by Jillian Kitchener.

A baby monkey - less than two weeks old - is already encouraging smiles amid troubling times.

Kiki was born at a small zoo in the Israeli-occupied West Bank during the two months it was closed to visitors for social distancing reasons.

Without the watchful eyes of strangers - nature ran its course at the zoo… which saw three times as many animals born then usual.

Veterinarian, Sami Khader: "For an example the ostrich used to lay eggs but she never built a nest for her eggs and covered them for incubation, throughout this period because there weren't people around her she was able to built a nest.” A total of 15 animals were born at the Zoo in March and April, including baby deer and peacocks.

At the same time - the zoo lost revenue without its usual 200,000 guests, according to the zoo’s manager.

But the animals didn’t seem to mind.

And now that restrictions have eased - visitors are returning, like this young boy who says he got tired of staying at home.

So he's back to watch animals do cute animal things, like this giant hippo eating an entire watermelon.

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