Update on Bahati’s passing

I do not think Bahati was premature. The problem with these very young animals is that they have no backup immune system. My theory is that he most probably developed a mild pneumonia. Although he was on antibiotics he still needs his immune system to fight it. The second thing is meconium that is found in the intestinal tract at birth, this can cause constipation if he did not suckle quickly after birth. We did give a mild laxative to counteract that. Remember the umbilical cord that was still fresh and exposed to the dirty water was also a route of infection and is very detrimental in any newborn. We immediately started to disinfect with iodine, and did so every 4 hours.

Remember in any newborn the anatomy is slightly different from an adult. The tissue color and texture is also different. I would say death was due to a bacterial septicemia that set in. The only other thing I would do extra is get rhino blood spun and administer the serum or globulin. It is also important to remember that once a newborn has depleted its fat reserves it was borne with, the whole body goes into a negative energy state. These are all things that are detrimental to survival and one tries to counteract this all. I am sure you can see it is a complicated situation. You can also appreciate that even in domestic species where a lot of research has been done. This is still the most difficult, cases like Bahati, to get successfully through the first couple of days. Zodiac covered all the costs involved as our part in this difficult struggle to keep this species alive. We are also very passionate about rhino, but not just them, all of our lovely fauna with which we are so blessed.”

I wanted to give everyone closure. Like myself, you all had questions about what went wrong for Bahati. I hope this explains it well enough.

Image below shows little Bahati just after the rescue in Pilanesberg.