Rescuing Orphan Elephants

Ask, Mar 2005

What would you do if you found a stray kitten? Give it a saucer of milk, cuddle it and keep it warm, try to convince Mom you need a new pet? Sounds good. But what if you found a baby elephant?

Little lost elephants may not be common in your neighborhood, but they are in Kenya in East Africa. And the best thing to do there is call the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust. They've been rescuing orphan elephants and successfully reintroducing them to the wild for more than 25 years.

Raising a baby elephant is a big responsibility. Like people, healthy elephants can live 70 years or longer, and their development is remarkably similar to ours. Babies two years and younger need almost constant attention. Children begin doing some things on their own but still need to be with their families. Teenagers are more independent, but elephants aren't considered fully adult until they're in their thirties. So taking in a stray elephant requires a long-term commitment.

It's hard work, too. A baby elephant can usually stand and walk soon after it's born, but for almost everything else during the next several years it depends on its mother. It drinks about five gallons of milk a day and must be fed every two hours. It needs to be kept warm but can't stay in the sun too long or its tender baby skin might get sunburned. It has to be taught how to behave and communicate-even how to use its trunk, which babies sometimes trip over while walking. And it needs to feel safe and loved.

In the Nursery

When a baby elephant first arrives at the orphanage nursery, one of the biggest problems it faces is grief. Elephants are highly intelligent, loving family members. In the wild, a female elephant usually stays with her family her whole life. Males don't leave until they're in their teens and then frequently return to visit. A baby separated from its family may feel so sad that it becomes ill and dies. The keepers at the Sheldrick Trust, therefore, must become the baby's substitute family. They spend every hour-waking and sleeping-with the little orphans, forming a lifelong friendship. They've learned, however, that each baby should have several human family members. If a baby bonds with only one person, it may become depressed when that person leaves, even to go home for a night.

The keepers spend a lot of their time just feeding the babies. Sometimes they have to teach a baby how to drink from a bottle. In the wild, a baby elephant will stand close to or under its mother and rest its trunk on her body as it nurses with its mouth. To make bottle-feeding feel less strange, the keepers often hang big blankets for the orphans to cuddle up against while they drink. As they get more comfortable, the babies begin to wind their trunks around the keepers instead.

Those blankets have another useful purpose. They keep the orphans warm on cool mornings and evenings. A baby's elephant family would normally protect it from cold or bad weather by surrounding it and sheltering it from wind or rain. Standing under mom or in her giant shadow protects the baby from sunburn, too. The keepers aren't big enough to offer much weather protection all by themselves so they rely on blankets and parasols and mud.

Yes, mud. Every day the orphans and their keepers go for a mud bath. Not only is the mud fun to play in but the babies learn that a nice coating of gooey mud can cool them off on a hot day. As the mud dries, it continues to protect them from the sun and prevents ticks and other insects from biting them. Most of the babies love the mud, but if one's a little shy, the keepers gently coax it into a shallow puddle and scoop mud on it, just like a mom would, only with a shovel in place of a trunk.

At Tsavo National Park

When an orphan has its first birthday, it's ready to move from the nursery to Tsavo National Park, where it will eventually be released into the wild elephant community. The orphans always go to Tsavo in a group. Being very social animals, they feel more at home when they're part of a herd. And they are always accompanied by their keepers.

They're not ready to roam free yet, though. They still need to be bottle-fed for at least one more year, and they're still too little to be safe from lions and other predators in the park, so they live in a stockade with their keepers. But the keepers take them into the wild every day and show them which grasses and leaves are good to eat. Older, previously released orphans welcome and befriend the newcomers and help teach them proper elephant behavior. They introduce the orphans to the wild herds, and gradually the orphans begin to spend more time with other elephants than with their human keepers.

There's no special age for releasing an orphan. Whenever it's ready-and every elephant is different-it just stops returning to the stockade at night and joins an elephant family. It never forgets its human family, though, and will often visit, helping to welcome the newest orphans.

The babies are happy and excited to meet an older elephant.