Calgary Zoo elephant pregnant
Her previous two calves died after being rejected
Maharani is pregnant again. Calgary zoo officials hope the female elephant’s third try at motherhood will be a lot more successful than her previous attempts. Known as Rani by zookeepers, the 22-year-old Asian elephant initially rejected both of her calves, which both subsequently died.
Rani is now 10 months along in a 22-month gestation period, meaning that she’s not due to give birth until February.
“Elephants have such a long gestation, we don’t get too excited about it until several months in,” said Colleen Baird, the zoo’s animal care area manager.
“We’re super excited. There’s nothing like a baby elephant. It’s like 300 pounds and it’s awkward-looking. It’s going to be fun.”
Rani first gave birth in 2004, but rejected the baby, which died three weeks later. She gave birth again in 2007 to a calf named Malti. That baby survived the initial rejection through the intervention of zookeepers, only to die at 15 months of endotheliotropic herpesvirus, a fatal virus that attacks the circulatory system.
Critics called on the zoo to halt its breeding program until more could be learned about the disease that claimed Malti, but the zoo has continued breeding Rani with a male named Spike.
Baird said the risk always exists for elephants to contract the virus.
“It’s in the wild populations, as well as captive. It’s a virus they have and it’s dormant for most of their lives,” she said.
“We’ve made a lot of headway on how to prepare for that. And we have ways to monitor it. We have an antiviral treatment. We’re all geared up if that happens to be the case.”
Baird said Rani did eventually bond with Malti, which may mean the new calf will have a better chance of connecting with its mother.
“She learned a lot from those two births and pregnancies and she showed a lot of positive bonding for Malti,” Baird said. “We have high hopes from that learning experience that she’ll do even better this time around, but it’s unknown.”
“We’ll be prepared if for some reason she doesn’t take to the calf. We’ll be ready to hand-rear her, if we have to.”
“We’re talking to a lot of other experts. We’re talking to a lot of other zoos. We’re travelling the globe, we’re doing our due diligence on research just trying to make this one that much more successful.”