Saiga calves are left alone after birth. Their mother picks them up the same day or the next day and brings them back to the herd.Photograph by Klaus NiggeAs we approached the spot, we saw twin calves lying in the brittle, pungent grass. They couldn't have been more than minutes old.Their downy, earth-brown fur was damp, their eyes unblinking black orbs, their twitching noses like miniature vacuum spouts.The mother would return later, Zuther explained, and in a few days they would leave here altogether.In the distance, eagles circled in the dome-like sky. Predators aside, the future for these newborns seemed reasonably secure.As we stood admiring them, the onlysounds were the soughing of the wind, the song of a lark, and the rapid breathing of the babies.We were elated—and humbled. Yet another generation of a creature that had coexisted millennia ago with woolly mammoths was emerging into the world of humans.David Stern is based in Kiev, Ukraine. He writes primarily about the countries of the former Soviet Union