Taipei Zoo staff have been reveling in the joys of welcoming more new members to their animal family after they recently succeeded in hatching three emu eggs in an incubator.
The zoo’s adult emus laid a total of 87 eggs in the first half of the year, from which zookeepers selected 16 to put in an incubator.
Once the three emu chicks were hatched, they were taken to the enclosure of a male emu in the zoo to receive natural parental care, the zoo said, adding that the male quickly accepted the three chicks.
Photo courtesy of Taipei Zoo
The emu is the largest native Australian bird species and males and females are very similar in appearance.
Female emus produce an egg every three to four days on average in the breeding period and leave the nesting area after covering it with foliage.
The male stays behind and incubates the eggs for the next eight weeks, surviving on nothing but its own body fat. It also nurtures the chicks on its own after they hatch.
Photo courtesy of Taipei Zoo
“The three baby emus are about three months old and have been living with their ‘nanny’ in the Australian Animal Area,” the zoo said.
“Baby emus are born with cream stripes which serve as camouflage and gradually disappear about three months after birth. The father takes care of the young until they are six months old and can survive on their own,” the zoo said.
Meanwhile, the zoo said its new panda cub, nicknamed Yuan Zai (圓仔), now weighs about 422.6g, more than double her weight when she was born on July 6.
Black fur has started to grow around Yuan Zai's eyes, ears and back, and she is healthy and growing fast, the zoo said.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods