The Great Plains Zoo in Sioux Falls, South Dakota has a new Grevy's Zebra baby born over Labor Day weekend to mother Demani.

"It's a healthy baby boy. He's pretty cute," said Allison Douglass, area supervisor at the Zoo.

The newborn has no name yet and is not seeing visitors. He's secluded in a birthing stall with his mom.
He weighs 100 pounds and his mother close to 1,000. Douglass said everything about the delivery was normal. Labor lasted a half-hour. The foal came out of the birth canal front feet first and then the head. He was up and moving around in 30 minutes and nursing within an hour.

If any birth is routine, then the dramatic element in Demani's delivery is her son's place in the world. He is a Grevy's zebra, a species that scientists say is endangered. Africa had 15,000 Grevy's zebras in the late 1970s. The population now is one-sixth that, about 2,500 in the wild, after 30 years of disturbance from people and competition from domestic grazing animals.

Photo Credit: Great Plains Zoo

The newborn eventually will be moved to a different home under the species survival program of the American Zoo and Aquarium Association. He is Demani's second foal. She gave birth in 2005 to Amira, now living at the Jacksonville Zoo in Florida.