Park rangers working at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya are surely used to welcoming new calves in the world. After all, they do care for over 1,600 elephants. However, when Paru gave birth in March 2018, this was a birth they weren’t expecting.
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This birth was a once-in-a-lifetime surprise. It was so rare that the last time it happened was nearly 40 years ago! Read on to find out what was so surprising and rare about the birth of one elephant.
Amboseli National Park
Amboseli National Park is located in the south of Kenya and is one of the most visited parks in the country. Well, it’s quite easy to see why. The place is absolutely vast and breathtaking to look at.
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The 150-square-mile wildlife haven allows you a great view of Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa’s tallest mountain. Plus, it’s one of the best places on the planet to get up close and personal with free-roaming elephants.
Not Just Elephants
Elephants aren’t the only inhabitants of Amboseli National Park, though. The protected park comprises seven different types of habitat: grassland plains, acacia woodland, lava-strewn thornbush, swamp, marshland, the Amboseli lake bed, and the slopes of Oldonyo Orok.
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This huge variety of habitat make the park the perfect host for a lot of wild animals like Masai giraffes, cheetahs, lions, and spotted hyenas, including 600 different species of birds! It truly is a diverse land.
The Main Attraction
However, despite this enormous variety of wildlife at Amboseli National Park, elephants are still the main attraction, mainly because there are so many of these gentle giants there. The park is said to have 1,700 elephants roaming freely.
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With that many elephants, it’s estimated that there about 60 different families making up the region. One of the most fascinating things about these creatures is how important family means to them.
Typical Elephant Family
Male and female elephants are quite different from each other. Male elephants tend to spend most of their lives living in solitary, while female elephants (also known as cows) are extremely social creatures.
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A typical elephant family can be likened to an Asian family in the sense that there are so many members, making it more fun. A typical elephant family can range anywhere from 3 to 25 mothers, aunties, daughters, and granddaughters, all of who form tight bonds with one another.
Family Values
Elephants are truly fascinating when it comes to families. They value their families so much that the norm is for them to spend the rest of their lives together. Don’t you think that’s such a wonderful thing?
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No other land animal stays with the members of their own family longer than the female calves choose to stay with their mothers. In this case, it can even last for more than half a century! Isn’t that just amazing?
Thoughts And Emotions
Furthermore, elephants are smart creatures. According to researchers, they are highly capable of very complex thought and emotions. In this sense, they are very much similar to human beings.
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Elephants are capable of feeling happiness, compassion, and also grief. They are known to come together at the places where their loved ones have passed on so they could mourn, for example. This is kind of like the animal kingdom equivalent of visiting a grave.
Motherhood Too
Elephants are also pretty amazing creatures when it comes to motherhood. Like human beings, no emotion is perhaps as strong as the love a mother feels for her daughter. Elephants experience very long pregnancies.
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In fact, their pregnancies are so long that they nearly last two years! If that weren’t unusual enough, they also have to wait around 5 years after giving birth before they can even have another one.
Complications
Unfortunately, these lengthy waiting times make things somewhat more complicated for elephants, especially those in Kenya like Paru. Even though poaching has been illegal in Kenya for a decade, these animals still suffer.
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Tens of thousands of elephants are killed every year due to these poachers. That, and their rather slow birth rates, make it difficult for conservationists to increase their declining numbers that are slowly becoming more and more alarming.
Cause For Celebration
Given that the wildlife population for elephants are declining at an alarming rate, the birth of any new elephant is surely a cause for celebration. However, things turned out differently when one elephant gave birth.
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When 39-year-old Paru welcomed a new offspring on Easter 2018, it was made even more special when her baby turned out to be a rare case. The staff at Amboseli were extremely overjoyed, and this rare case caught the attention of everyone worldwide.
Not Just One
You see, what happened was, when the very pregnant Paru went into labour at the end of March 2018, she didn’t just pop out one baby elephant. Paru welcomed double the trouble into the world. She had twin calves!
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It was truly a sight to see. The last time an elephant at Amboseli National Park ever had two calves at once was back in 1980, which was 41 years ago! It’s now easy to see why the staff were overjoyed and surprised.
Rare
The rarity of twin births in elephants isn’t just an isolated case in Amboseli. In fact, so far, they only account for 1 in every 100 elephants births. If we scale that up a bit, that means out of the 1,000 elephants born, only 10 of them had twins.
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Of course, the surprise arrival of these two lovely baby elephants was a big cause for celebration. Paru had one female and one male. However, the astonishing surprises did not stop at that. There was simply more to come.
Unlikely
Unfortunately, while the possibility of an elephant giving birth to twins is extremely rare, there’s also a catch to this. The chances of twin elephants surviving for very long once they are born are also very unlikely.
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Sadly, there aren’t a lot of studies available that explain exactly why mortality rates in twin elephants are much higher. However, one reason for this could be that they fight for food while inside the tummy and probably don’t get as much nutrition compared to just being the only one in the womb.
Katito and Norah
The rare siblings were named Katito and Norah, and they were the latest addition to one of the largest herds at the reserve. The family welcomed them with open arms and it seemed like everyone was chipping in to help out.
Amboseli Trust for Elephants/Facebook
On their Facebook post, they wrote, “These twin babies have a great start in life, being born in a lush rainfall year, to an experienced mother like Paru. Their big sister Padua is a very serious babysitter.”
Defying The Odds
For a while, it seemed that the twins were thriving. The staff at Amboseli were delighted to share the elephants’ progress with their devoted fans through their Facebook account, Amboseli Trust For Elephants.
Amboseli Trust for Elephants/Facebook
Kenneth Ole Nashu, senior warden at Amboseli, told ODN, “This is a very unique scenario in terms of conservation, particularly in elephant population.” The twins were born in May 2018, and then on October 22, the Facebook page posted an update.
Natural
Amboseli Trust for Elephants wrote, “We are very sorry to have to report that one of the twin elephants born to Paru in Amboseli died. The female calf was the smaller one of the two and at an early stage had sustained an injury to her back which seemed to heal.”
Amboseli Trust for Elephants/Facebook
“We kept a close eye on the twins and it seemed she got better on her own; we, therefore, cannot say for sure that this was the cause of death. She died a natural death, something that almost every elephant mother in the wild has endured at some point in her life,” the post continued.
Where Is Katito?
The post ended by saying, “As sad as it is we are happy that the remaining calf is strong and healthy. Twins in elephants are very rare but few survive into adulthood. Paru and the remaining calf are with the family and we feel confident that they will be fine.”
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Currently, Katito, the male twin, is still alive and well and is now 3 years old. He is still in Amboseli National Park and lives together with about 74 other wild elephants. Although Norah did not survive, unfortunately, it’s nice to know that Katito really defied the odds. Katito can be spotted in the photo resting next to his buddies.
In Good Hands
Thankfully, the elephants are in very capable hands, so their wellbeing is surely a priority. The Amboseli Trust For Elephants is an organization whose main priority is the long-term conservation and welfare of Africa’s elephants.
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Thankfully, the organization has a well-established research program. Since the early 70s, its members have been committed to studying and learning as much as they can about these creatures to figure out the best way to protect them.
38 Years Ago
Aside from Norah and Katito, the last time an elephant gave birth to twins at Amboseli National Park was 38 years ago. These twin elephants were named Equinox and Eclipse and were born from the elephant named Estella
Amboseli Trust for Elephants
Equinox and Eclipse were born in June 1980. These two calves were surely the exemption to the rule as they remained healthy over the years. Sadly, they have no offspring of their own, but what matters most is that they are living a healthy life.
Thriving
Both elephants are currently still alive and are already 41 years old! Even their mother, Estelle, is also still alive. All three elephants are living together in the same family as Kantito and his mother.
Amboseli Trust for Elephants
While both Equinox and Eclipse are both living a long and healthy life, let’s hope Kantito remains healthy over the years so he can grow up and have his own offspring, too. Nature really is wonderful, don’t you think?