SAN DIEGO (CNS) - The San Diego Zoo announced Wednesday the hatching of a brown kiwi chick for the first time in more than a decade.
The female emerged from its egg March 11 at the zoo's Avian Propagation Center and is being monitored by animal care staff. Zoo officials didn't say when the previous brown kiwi hatching at the facility occurred.
According to the zoo, the chick didn't eat for six days and lost 26 percent of her body weight, which is typical for the species. Weight gain began last week, and she checked-in at 11.8 ounces on Tuesday.
The kiwi has several unusual traits for a bird species -- it does not fly, the mothers do not feed their chicks, and the egg is four times the expected size for a bird of the kiwi's proportions.
The chick is the 11th member of the endangered species hatched at the zoo, which reared its first brown kiwi in 1983. The zoo is one of six in the U.S. working with the species.
