Mail Online :
Prince George squealed with delight today as he met Australia’s version of the Easter Bunny for the first time, a bilby named after him at the zoo in Sydney.
The future king, who will be nine-months-old on Tuesday, was taken on a trip to Taronga Zoo with his parents, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, who officially opened the Prince George Bilby Exhibit at the Sydney landmark. They met George, a three-and-a-half-year-old bilby in the Australian Nightlife enclosure. His original name was Boy but he was renamed George two months ago to celebrate the Prince’s birth last year.
Prince George was enthralled by his bilby namesake, at Sydney’s Taronga Zoo, which he visited with his mother and father
The infant Prince, carried by his mother when they arrived, looked on in wonder at the crowd surrounding the enclosure and then wriggled his arms and legs in excitement, squealing and gurgling when he spotted his namesake bilby.
His parents took it in turns to hold him in their arms and to support him standing up on the ground, restraining him as he tried to climb into the enclosure to get at the bilby.
But still Prince George was itching to get at the bilby so William crouched down with his son and holding him expertly with one arm, took some of the bilby’s feed with his other hand to coax the marsupial back.
Prince William was totally fearless as the bilby came over to eat out of his hands and George, a chip off the old block, also reached out to stroke the creature. Both parents protectively pulled him back. ‘He’s trying to grab his ear,’ said Kate, 32, who was wearing a yellow dress.
‘If he gets it he’ll never let go,’ said William, who kissed the top of his son’s head. As the keeper went to coax the bilby closer to George, Kate stepped in to stop him, thinking it a bad idea. ‘He’s got quite a strong grab actually,’ she said.
Kate had changed out her dove-grey Alexander McQueen outfit she wore to church, into a cream broderie angalise dress by a designer who did not want to be named. The dress had a fitted bodice and flared out to the knee. She last wore it on tour to the Solomon Islands in 2012. Prince William was casual in a blue check shirt and navy trousers.
Greater bilbies are rabbit-like creatures with large ears that pick up the sounds of insects and have long noses to sniffs out seeds and bulbs.
They were once common in Australia’s grassy woodlands but have been driven to the verge of extinction by predators such as foxes and cats and competition from rabbits, all introduced to the country by British settlers.
With only 10,000 left in the wild in northern Queensland and Western Australia, a conservation campaign begun in the late 1960s has gathered pace in the last decade with chocolate Easter bilbies replacing chocolate bunnies in many Australian children’s homes.
