Cincinnati Zoo chooses Kalahari as the name for its baby bat-eared fox

The newborn bat-eared fox at the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden is named Kalahari, or “Kal” for short, the zoo announced in a tweet Thursday.

The name is a nod to Africa’s Kalahari Desert, where bat-eared foxes are native, the zoo explains in the post.

The Kalahari Desert extends approximately 360,000 square kilometers across Botswana, Namibia and South Africa. The landscape is home to a variety of animals, including meerkats, the Kalahari lion, Cape cobras and gemsbok − a large member of the antelope family.

The zoo announced Kal’s name almost three weeks after he was born on April 5. The male kit is known to “sleep a lot” and “make cute noises when it’s feeding time,” Samantha Villa, lead keeper of the zoo’s Animal Ambassador Team, said in a news conference. Edition.