An Asian elephant gave birth to twins in Thailand (image above, AFP), a rare event for this endangered species, after a perilous birth that injured a caregiver.
Eighteen minutes after an 80-kilogramme male was born on Friday night, a 60-kilogram female elephant was born, and the mother, Pangjamjuri, suffered a nervous breakdown.
A member of the team at the centre where the elephant lives intervened to prevent her from attacking the second newborn, but was hit in the ankle as a reaction.
Elephant mothers rarely have enough milk to feed twins, and they would struggle to survive if they lived in the wild
“The mother attacked the newborn because she had never had twins before. It’s very rare,” said Michelle Reedy of Elephantstay, which manages this facility in Ayutthaya, near Bangkok, central Thailand.
The mother has now accepted the two elephant calves, but they are so small that a platform has been set up for them to reach her for breastfeeding. They are also being given supplementary milk through a syringe.
Elephants have the longest gestation period of all mammals, 18 to 22 months, and they give birth about every four to five years.
A rare event
According to the research organisation Save the Elephants, twins are born in only about 1% of pregnancies, and the likelihood of a female and a male being born is even rarer.
Many of the 80 Asian elephants at the Elephantstay centre were once used by beggars to solicit money on the streets, a practice that was banned in Thailand in 2010.
Today, they are mainly used to transport tourists between temples and ancient ruins in Ayutthaya, the ancient capital of Siam.
Nature conservation organisations express their opposition to elephant rides, arguing that they cause great stress to the animals and may also mean abusive training methods.
The centre states that these rides allow elephants to socialise and exercise, in a context of poaching and deforestation that threatens their population in the region.
Today, there are still 8,000 to 11,000 Asian elephants -a slightly smaller species than African elephants- living in the wild, according to WWF.
The twins will be named seven days after their birth, according to Thai tradition..