Quote:
Originally Posted by Sailor Steve
Pics or it didn't happen.
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Well I personally don't have pics of them mating but I was told the story by the zoo's head elephant keeper.
I happened to visit there when the baby who resulted from the incident was just a few months old. The zoo was in the process of expanding and improving the elephant exhibit at the time, and because of some work being done to the exterior that day, the momma and baby had been moved for a couple of hours into a backup interior holding/viewing area. However that area was not really designed for elephants, in that - although it was plenty large enough to accomodate them and let them move around freely - the distance between the open bars of the pens and the visitor walkway was small enough that a visitor could reach out and touch an elephant's trunk if the elephant decided to cooperate by extending it through the bars in that direction. Which they were more than happy to do, especially if you had food. And of course there was nothing to stop less thoughtful visitors from tossing food or other objects right into the pen.
Consequently, to avoid those possibilities, the head elephant dude was on station there to monitor both elephant and human behavior and make sure nothing untoward happened. Which meant that anybody who cared to listen got to hear the story of how little baby Ganesh (the first elephant-type creature born in Ohio since the days of the woolly mammoths) was conceived.
Apparently when the zoo acquired the female that was to be his mother, they believed that any possible breeding program was a good ways off since neither she nor the prospective father were considered old enough to have romance on their minds, lol. So they didn't see any reason to keep them apart and let them roam their exterior habitat together.
Then one day, the keeper said, he was working around the corner in the interior part of the exhibit when a lady came in and said, "Are you the elephant keeper?" and he said, "Yes, can I help you?" And she said, "I think you better come outside and see this" and he asked why and she said, "Because I think your gentleman elephant is making love to your lady elephant out here in the yard." And sure enough...
They didn't think the momma was mature enough to conceive or carry to term either but she did both. And, since she was raised by humans, they didn't know if she'd know how to raise a baby of her own. But she did just fine.
The funniest thing about it was that this keeper was clearly so proud and so in love with this li'l critter that I half expected him to reach into his back pocket for his wallet pull out a big packet of baby photos just like a proud first-time grampa.
Oh and BTW bebby elephants are Teh Cute.
