LOS ANGELES — Across the Los Angeles Zoo this summer, babies of different species are toddling, waddling and jumping in pens and yards and stalls.
A giraffe was born in April and another is expected any day. There are two Chacoan peccaries, also known as javelinas, from South America, and a Japanese serow, a rare goat-antelope.
There’s a Mexican lance-headed rattlesnake, less than a month old, and a month-old gerenuk, a gazelle, already standing on outstretched slender legs as he browses for leafy vegetation.
The nursery is full of babies being hand-reared because they are recovering from illnesses or their mothers can’t do the job. In a shaded outdoor nursery stall, two red river hog piglets, shaped like furry brown- and yellow-striped watermelons, turn their glistening snouts toward a keeper.
“They’re like big puppies,” veterinarian Curtis Eng said. “They’re very good jumpers.”
