You can help name Fort Worth Zoo’s new baby elephant born last month
The Fort Worth Zoo has announced the birth of a new baby elephant and is asking for the public’s help naming her.
The female calf, weighing 250 pounds and standing 3 feet tall, was born Aug. 18. Visitors to the zoo’s Elephant Springs habitat can see the new little one from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. daily.
This new addition brings the zoo’s Asian elephant herd to nine members, which now includes five females and four males. She’s spent the last month bonding with mother Bluebonnet behind the scenes and learning to swim, zoo staff said in a news release Friday.
Like all elephants born at the Fort Worth Zoo, the new little one will be given a Texas-themed name. Staff have suggested three options, all having to do with flowers in honor of mom Bluebonnet.
Zoo fans can choose from Lady Bird (Birdie) after Lady Bird Johnson, the U.S. First Lady from Texas who was instrumental in getting wildflowers planted along Texas highways; Yellow Rose (Rosie) after the 19th century folk song “The Yellow Rose of Texas” and Black-eyed Susan (Susie) after the Texas native wildflower.
Voting is now open on the zoo’s website through Oct. 6. The winning moniker will be announced Oct. 7.
The calf is the sixth elephant to be born at the Fort Worth Zoo. Her mother, Bluebonnet, was the first. 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.
Asian elephants are endangered
The population of Asian elephants continues to decline, and they are classified as endangered on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List. It’s estimated that fewer than 50,000 are left in the wild.
The Fort Worth Zoo launched an Asian elephant breeding program in 1986 and spearheaded a conservation organization known as the International Elephant Foundation in 1998.
Michael Fouraker, executive director of the Fort Worth Zoo and founding president of the IEF, told the Star-Telegram in 2023 that the number of elephants in zoos across the country has also declined. Fouraker said many zoos shied away from keeping males because they are more destructive and harder to maintain than females. Now zoo elephant populations are aging out with no offspring to replace them.
“That’s big picture zoos as a whole,” Fouraker said during a 2023 interview. “We have ... elephants that are coming up in age and we will have elephants well into the future because we have young females coming up.”
This story was originally published September 26, 2025 at 12:26 PM.
