Despite a little bit of reluctance from Pili – the Hattiesburg Zoo’s resident mother hyena – to reveal the gender of her cub, zoo officials were able to pull off a successful gender reveal for the baby on January 13 at the hyena exhibit.
During that celebration, it was revealed that the hyena cub – which is named Cazimira, meaning “Destroyer of Peace” in Slavic – is a female. Cazimira was born at the zoo on October 13 to Pili and father Niru.
“I hope the public understands that animals are like kids – they’ll do whatever they want at the timeframe they decide, and that’s what happened (on the reveal day),” said Rick Taylor, executive director of the Hattiesburg Convention Commission, which manages the zoo. “I guess there were so many people looking and waiting, that Pili was skittish, and she would not come out and pull the rope with a piece of chicken on it that would cause the confetti to fall (showing pink confetti to reveal that Cazimira is a female).
“So after about 45 minutes we had a ‘Plan B,’ and that was our keepers had some confetti cannons that we shot off. But it was a lot of fun, and we had a great turnout, and we’re really happy about that. We wish that (Pili) would perform on cue, but she doesn’t; she’s a hyena, so she does what she wants. But we’re excited to have a cub.”
During the gender reveal, before the pink confetti was shot from the cannon, zoo guests waved pink and blue flags – with blue representing the male gender – with approximately half of the guests rooting for each gender. Cazimira is the second surviving hyena cub to be born to Pili and Niru at the Hatttiesburg Zoo.
“This is really unique for Hattiesburg – in all of North America, we are the only zoo that has been able to have surviving hyena cubs,” Taylor said. “The great thing about it is, when we built the hyena compound, the whole intent was to get Niru from Europe to get a new bloodline going within the zoo world, as far as hyenas are concerned in North America.”
Late last year, zoo officials announced that Cazimira’s sibling had died of injuries sustained during fights between the two sisters, leaving Cazimira as the only surviving cub of that litter. The infighting had been occurring between the cubs since shortly after their birth as the pair competed for dominance, which is usual among hyenas in the wild.
“We knew that this is a frequent occurrence in hyena births when there is more than one (cub born), and typically there are more than one (in a litter) – they’re twins or sometimes quadruplets,” Taylor said in a previous story. “The (cub) that died, it had some wounds already, from aggression from the sibling, and we had prepared a sign to put on the exhibit to explain the wounds that the public would see.
“We hoped it wouldn’t continue, but we were wrong – it did. We’ve looked at the cameras and we can see the animals at a certain point, but then they kind of go out of view, and we don’t see the cubs come back into view. So we’re unclear (of exactly when it happened).”
Pili’s first cub, Kito, was born at the zoo on October 17, 2022, and was later relocated to the Rolling Hills Zoo in Kansas, to become part of a breeding pair.
Kito’s relocation is part of the Species Survival Plan, which is a population and conservation program for selected species of wildlife. The program’s goal is to maintain captive populations that are both genetically diverse and demographically stable.
