Our Elephant Calf is Dying

MoonstoneWolf

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Really needs good thoughts and prayers This is a big deal for us in St Louis MO because he'd be the 2nd male Asian Elephant born here: His father Raja being the first. For those who are not aware, Elephants bond and feel more emotion then humans do and I'm sure the Mom, Rani is devestated. While the St Louis Zoo if doing the best they can there's only so much that can be done. This will be very traumatic for our Zoo and for us if they have to mercifully send him across the Rainbow Bridge. I feel for Rani.

Elephan calf is struggling.jpg
 

pskane610

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Lots of good thoughts and prayers from me! Poor baby boy! And mommy!
 

neely

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Sending special thoughts and healing vibes to the sweet male calf. :vibes::vibes::vibes:
 
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MoonstoneWolf

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Thanks all. I'll keep you all updated on his progress or (worse case scenario) lack of. But if memory serves me correctly I think Raja (Dad) also had the same problem when he was a calf. I can't remember completely as that was 27 years ago and I can't find many resources online about it if anyone would feel so inclined? Raja's mother's name is Pearl and he was born at the St Louis Zoo.
 

jefferd18

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Oh wow, I live here but I did not know. I wonder what made him so sick to begin with. I will definitely send prayers and healing thoughts to him.
 
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MoonstoneWolf

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Oh wow, I live here but I did not know. I wonder what made him so sick to begin with. I will definitely send prayers and healing thoughts to him.
Do you remember if Raja was the same way when he was a calf? I heard a few people mention he was having problems eating when he was same age. If so there may be hope then for this one. I feel so bad, Raja lost a daughter a few ago as well to that cancer that elephants get
 

jefferd18

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Do you remember if Raja was the same way when he was a calf? I heard a few people mention he was having problems eating when he was same age. If so there may be hope then for this one. I feel so bad, Raja lost a daughter a few ago as well to that cancer that elephants get

I do not, but everything I have read on him and the photos that I have seen suggest that he was not ill. This little guy seems to have a developmental problem and can't eat. I have honestly never heard of such a thing. Was his daughter a baby?
 
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MoonstoneWolf

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No she was a full grown elephant. I forgot what her name was but it's easy enough to find out.

Edited to add: her name was Kenzi. Born 2011 and died in 2018. I'm not sure at what age they reach sexual maturity.
 

jefferd18

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No she was a full grown elephant. I forgot what her name was but it's easy enough to find out.

Edited to add: her name was Kenzi. Born 2011 and died in 2018. I'm not sure at what age they reach sexual maturity.

I am begining to wonder if there is not something wrong with Raja- two of his offspring are dealt serious health blows.
 
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MoonstoneWolf

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Elephants in the wild and the zoos all have some illness right now. There was an article about elephants dropping dead in Bostwana and it has nothing to do with poachers. In a month almost 2000 of them. They're still trying to figure out what's going on. Maybe it's that, but since you live here you know that our zoo is doing all they can for this baby
 
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MoonstoneWolf

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Lots of good thoughts and prayers from me! Poor baby boy! And mommy!
My heart just shattered to pieces. The St Louis Zoo had to humanely euthanize the baby male elephant. This would be Raja's 2nd offspring that had to be put down. The first was a daughter that developed a form of cancer and had to be euthanized at 7 years of age and this one, a male. I know that the zoo did everything they could for the little one but it still is so sad.
 

pskane610

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Oh, I am so sorry! It is a terrible tragedy any time we lose one of the magnificent animals!
 

Hoboforeternity

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I am so sorry. Elephants are my favorite animal (at least general as a species. My favorite individual animal is obviously my kitty Rivel lol) they are smart, majestic, gentle yet strong.

It just depress me the possibility that they extinct in your lifetime exist.
 

The Goodbye Bird

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Best wishes. I know when I have an animal that is sick or dead, I go through a lot, and I've worked with a lot of different exotics (though not elephants; I know zero about elephants mainly because huge herbivores freak me out a little). I pretty much torture myself, and I'll do it over even a $0.55 male baby chicken and even when the catalogs flat out tell you some will fail to thrive.

I've even saved other peoples' animals (how I got into exotics) and I still do this to myself.

Sometimes one just doesn't thrive and intellectually I know this but some part of my brain doesn't fully accept it.

I suspect if you're serious and love your animals, you can't really avoid it.

Basically, I know what you're going through. It sucks. It makes it worse than an elephant is such a huge deal and they can only make one baby every five years. Rate-of-reproduction-wise, a baby elephant is a much bigger deal than a baby human. With most other animals, there's at least that I-still-have-these-other-ones factor and losing whole litters is rare.
 
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MoonstoneWolf

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I know and I saw a special on TV while at the dentist that showed how elephants grieve and they even bury their own. It's said that their emotions are even stronger than a human's emotions. I can only imagine what Rani is feeling (still) although I'm sure she knows the staff did all they could for her baby. I don't know, species wise, how attached Raja would have been though, if at all. Do male elephants in the wild feel any kind of grief?
 

The Goodbye Bird

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Do male elephants in the wild feel any kind of grief?
My guess would be no but that doesn't mean they don't in captivity. In fact my guess would be yes in captivity.

One time, some people raised a bunch of orangutans to release back into the wild, and even though this is not so in the wild, because they were raised in a group, they became social. I believe they were then useless to release back into the wild because the orangutan's natural habitat has only sparse resources and doesn't support groups. They have to be loners.

Once you have that base of high empathy it tends to turn on for whatever is close to you and alike to you.

Male hippos, however, are evil. They will kill a calf as soon as look at it. If you asked me to point to one evil animal it would be them.

What I wonder is if there's a basis for mature bull elephants and calves in captivity. Will they harm the calf? Do they have to be kept separate? Or will they interact with the calf? I imagine there's your answer (but again my guess is yes, they have the empathy for it).
 
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