Fort Worth Zoo’s new baby elephant now has a name, and it’s very Texan
The Fort Worth Zoo’s new baby elephant now has a name, after the public cast more than 18,000 votes for their favorite.
The female Asian elephant calf born on Aug. 18 will be named Lady Bird, a tribute to former first lady Lady Bird Johnson of Texas.
Though she’s less than two months old now, Lady Bird weighs in at 320 pounds and “is showing great signs of confidence and curiosity, venturing off on her own, but never out of sight from Mom,” a zoo spokesperson said Tuesday.
The zoo held a naming contest with three choices, all of them related to Texas wildflowers in honor of the elephant’s 27-year-old mother Bluebonnet, who was the first elephant born at the Fort Worth Zoo.
The two other choices were Yellow Rose, or Rosie, after the folk song “The Yellow Rose of Texas,” and Black-eyed Susan, or Susie, after the Texas native wildflower. Lady Bird Johnson, of course, is the reason why Texas highways are so colorful during the spring and summer. She was devoted to preserving, cultivating and displaying native plants and landscapes.
In 1982, Johnson and actress Helen Hayes founded what’s now the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center in Austin.
Meet Lady Bird, the Fort Worth Zoo’s baby elephant
Meanwhile, back at the zoo, visitors to the Elephant Springs habitat can catch a glimpse of Lady Bird from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. daily.
The zoo says Lady Bird is “navigating her trunk well and can often be seen copying the trunk movements of the other female adults in the herd.”
Lady Bird is the ninth member of the zoo’s herd of Asian elephants.
The calf is the sixth elephant to be born at the Fort Worth Zoo. She joins big brother Brazos, born in October 2021, and half-brother Travis, born in February 2023.
Bluebonnet’s first calf, Bowie, was sent to the Oklahoma City Zoo in 2022 to help grow their herd. Bowie recently sired a calf there, making Fort Worth Zoo elephant matriarch Rasha a great-grandmother.
