The animal world recently celebrated a rare phenomenon with the birth of twin elephants.
The pair were birthed by a 39-year-old elephant named Paru at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya.
The twins are now settled down in the 391 square kilometer park amongst a herd of about 40 elephants.
The area is a huge tourists attraction due to the large population of elephants which is estimated at 1,600 elephants grouped into about 58 families.
The birth of the twins has caused a stir of excitement due to the rare nature of a twin elephant birth.
Especially since a recent drought that claimed the lives of elephants in their herds. The last known birth of surviving twin elephants at Amboseli occurred in 1980, according to ECNS.cn.
“For the last 38 years, this park experienced a very unique scenario whereby we have an elephant giving birth to twins. That was around 1980 and then this time around we had Paru giving birth to twins again. This is a very unique scenario in terms of conservation particularly in the elephant population,” Amboseli National Park Senior Warden Kenneth Ole Nashu said.
There is a less than 1% chance that a mother elephant will give birth to twins. And it’s very likely that one will die shortly after giving birth.
Surviving twin elephants are rare because of the elephant’s enormous size and the gestation period of 22-months, which can present a challenge in the wild.
The park protects their elephants by eliminating poaching to increase chances of survival. They seek out the help of about 300 scouts from local communities to monitor the area and protect elephants from poachers. Their main strategy is to take head counts of their elephants.
“We are trying to establish the number of wildlife species, the big mammals that we have in the ecosystem because as you have heard from our chief scientist here it is not possible to manage what we cannot count; what we cannot measure so the objective today is to establish the number of the big animals that we have in this ecosystem so that we can be able to establish the management strategies. We want to know how many are in the parks, how many are outside the park,” Julius Kimani, director with Kenya Wildlife Services, said.
So those at Amboseli National Park were very pleased by the birth of the twins who are now 2-months-old.
“This is a very unique scenario in terms of conservation, particularly in the elephant population,”Ole Nashu told ODN. “We are really proud, and we are now monitoring [to ensure] that the babies are in quite good health.”
The twins have been staying close to their mother and big sister to stay safe.
Elephant herds are lead by a matriarch.
“The family consists of cousins, grandmother, and sisters,” the park’s Norah Njiranini said. “They stay together the rest of their lives. And the oldest female, she is the boss of the family. There is no ‘ papa.’ The males leave the families when they are 10 to 15-years-old.”
You can see this beautiful new family in the video below.
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