Animals: Rare birth of twin elephants in Thailand

An elephant gave birth to twins in Thailand, a fairly rare occurrence for the large endangered mammal, after a stormy birth which injured a keeper.

When a 60 kg female baby elephant came out 18 minutes after an 80 kg male on Friday evening, the mother, Jamjuree, went into a frenzy. A member of the team from the center where the elephant is kept then intervened to prevent her from attacking the youngest, but in return he received a blow to one ankle.

“The mother attacked the newborn because she never had twins before. It’s very rare,” Michelle Reedy, of the Elephantstay association, which manages the facility located in Ayutthaya, near Bangkok (center), told AFP on Monday.

Long gestation

The mother has now accepted her two elephants, but they are so small that a platform has been set up to help them suckle. They also receive additional milk using a syringe.

Mothers often don’t have enough milk for twins, who would have difficulty surviving in the wild, according to Michelle Reedy. Elephants have the longest gestation period of all mammals, carrying their young for 18 to 22 months and giving birth approximately every four to five years.

The birth of twins only occurs in about 1% of cases, according to the research organization Save the Elephants, and the possibility of giving birth to a female and a male is even rarer.

Named in 7 days

Many of the Elephantstay center’s 80 pachyderms have been used to beg for alms in the streets, a practice banned in Thailand since 2010. They are now used to transport tourists between the temples and ruins of Ayutthaya, an ancient capital of Siam.

Conservation groups oppose elephant rides, saying they are stressful for the animals and may involve training abuse.

The center says these allow elephants to socialize and exercise, amid poaching and deforestation that threaten the pachyderm population in the region.

There are between 8,000 to 11,000 Asian elephants – a little smaller than those in Africa – left in the wild, according to WWF. The twins will be named seven days after their birth, in accordance with Thai custom.

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AFP

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