A beautiful photo from the animal kingdom warms hearts worldwide. The drone image shows an elephant calf resting snuggled close to its mother in a game reserve in southern India. What makes the snapshot even more touching is the fact that the elephant had lost its mother and the rest of the herd a few days earlier. For the same money, the animal would now have been dead. But thanks to the tireless efforts of some park rangers in the Anamalai Tiger Reserve, this heart-warming outcome occurred.
The elephant calf, only about four to five months old, became separated from its mother and the elephant herd in Tamil Nadu on December 29, reports ‘The Guardian’. Park rangers found the elephant alone, desperately searching for its mother. The calf was probably unable to keep up with the herd and thus lost its way.
Divorced
Normally an elephant herd does not simply move on if a calf becomes separated from the group, but in this case it happened that the mother and the herd had already moved about 4 kilometers further.
“Normally the herd moves on, but a small group hangs around to try to find the calf,” said Kartick Satyanarayan, CEO of Wildlife SOS. “But sometimes, especially if the animals are in an area where there are conflicts with people, the group does move on. For safety. The matriarch of the herd must choose between the good of the herd and the good of one calf.”
Smeared with mud
Fortunately, park rangers decided to do everything they could when they found the little elephant alone, a day after it became separated from the group. First they had to locate the herd using drones, and then the calf was brought all the way back to them. Partly by truck and then another part on foot.
The elephant was also washed extensively and completely smeared with mud, so that it would no longer smell like a human. “This would help the mother and her aunts welcome the calf back and reduce their anxiety about any human imprint,” Satyanarayan said.
It worked. The elephant calf was successfully reunited with its mother.
Three days later
The team decided to monitor the two even more, and three days later the amazing image on the hill was captured with a drone: the elephant calf was spotted taking a good nap with its mother on a rock, somewhere near a tea plantation. Valparai. Supriya Sahu, a local Environment, Climate Change and Forest official, shared the image on Twitter, where it has now gone viral.
Supriya Sahu IAS
@supriyasahuias
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