Meet the only surviving elephant twins in the US. They were just born at New York zoo
A zoo in upstate New York made history when it announced the birth and survival of twin elephants, a rare phenomenon that has never happened in the United States.
“Everyone’s kind of astonished that this has first of all happened at all, secondly that they’re both surviving this far and thirdly that they’re doing as well as they are right now,” Ted Fox, executive director of the Rosamond Gifford Zoo in Syracuse, told McClatchy News.
Mali, a female Asian elephant, an endangered species, gave birth to a 220-pound male calf in the early morning hours on Oct. 24, according to a news release from the zoo. Ten hours later, to the astonishment of zoo staff, she delivered a second calf, a 237-pound male.
No one expected the second calf due to the difficulties related to elephant ultrasounds — which have to be administered rectally — and the unlikelihood of twins, Fox said.
“It’s less than one percentage of all elephant pregnancies that result in twins, so it’s extremely rare,” he said, noting that the twin pregnancies that do occur often result in stillbirths.
Though twins have been reported in other countries, including Kenya and Sri Lanka, Mali’s calves are the first case of surviving elephant twins in the United States, Fox said.
There are only about 50,000 Asian elephants remaining in the wild, with the majority being in India, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Loss of habitat, “due to the combined effects of human pressure and climate change” and conflicts with humans render the species vulnerable.
The new twins are part of the zoo’s involvement in the Association of Zoos and Aquariums’ Asian Elephant Species Survival Plan, a program geared toward saving endangered species, Fox said. They were the product of a natural breeding.
The addition of the twins, the third generation in the herd’s family, brings the zoo’s Asian elephant population to eight, Fox said.
Shortly after their births, the mother’s placenta was rushed to a nearby university to research development of a vaccine against a lethal form of the herpes virus that occurs in elephants, the zoo said.
“It is clear that zoos are places where people connect to wildlife, but they are also where the extraordinary conservation and research achievements occur,” Dan Ashe, President and CEO of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, said in the release.
The zoo has no plans to relocate the twins, who have not yet been named, in the near future. Though Fox noted that wild male elephants tend to leave their herds to start their own between ages five and 10.
“The purpose of the species survival plan is to create a healthy genetic population within the United States and beyond,” Fox said. “Depending upon if there are other places that need them, we’ll wait for recommendations, but our intention is to keep them for at least quite some time.”
Visitors will be able to see the elephant twins daily from 11-11:30 a.m. and 2–2:30 p.m., according to the zoo.
This story was originally published November 11, 2022 at 2:18 PM with the headline "Meet the only surviving elephant twins in the US. They were just born at New York zoo."