New home for zoo's rhino

3:19pm Tuesday 3rd April 2007

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BUILDING a new home for an animal, be it a two-tonne rhinoceros or a 150-gram dragon, is no mean feat.

But this week, five small Komodo dragons and a Greater one-horned Rhinoceros - or Asian rhino - will all move into new homes at Chester Zoo.

“The last time there were this many siblings under one roof must have been in an episode of the Waltons."

Kevin Buley

Three-year-old rhinoceros Patna's accommodation near the zoo's main entrance includes heated mud wallows and indoor, off-show heated swimming pool. He will share it with a number of Blackbuck and Brow-antlered deer.

It is the first time in nine years that the zoo, which also has a number of Black rhinos, has provided a home for endangered Asian rhino.

Patna, who came from Berlin Zoo, will be joined in September by a female rhino from Switzerland with the hope that they will breed.

Also looking forward to a change of scenery are the five Komodo Dragon babies, hatched in January. Irwin, Herman, Indie, Bert and Ernie, have been moved from their off-show facilities in the Tropical Realm to a purpose-built enclosure in Islands in Danger.

It is the first time the siblings will have been seen by the public since they hatched and they will finally be under the same roof as mum Flora. Flora and her babies became an overnight star when it was revealed she had laid a clutch of eggs without ever being mixed with, or mated by, a male dragon.

Kevin Buley, Curator of Lower Vertebrates and Invertebrates, said: "The last time there were this many siblings under one roof must have been in an episode of the Waltons. Our dragons are getting along just as well as they did."