Tag: Samburu Elephant Twins

ABOUT RARE ELEPHANT TWINS IN KENYA An African elephant by the name Bora from the winds Family in Kenya's Samburu National Reserve gave birth to twins on January 20, 2022, an event said to be extremely rare. They were first spotted by lucky tour guides on a safari drive on a weekend in Samburu reserve in northern Kenya. They were confirmed to be one male and one female. African elephants have the longest gestation period of any mammal, about 22 months, and give birth approximately every four years. In the elephant world, twin births are very rare. The survival of the twins depends very much on the quality of the grass and vegetation as well as the mother’s experience. Another occurrence such as this one also happened in Amboseli national park in the year 2020. What was interesting about the twins at the Amboseli National Park was that they were able to observe that the twins had an older sister. The three elephants traveled together near their mother. If the mother stepped away it seemed the older sister baby sat. Elephant calves are huge! At birth, elephants can weigh 120kgs. As well as being the largest land mammal on earth, elephants are a keystone species and play an important role in the environment where they live. They're ‘landscape architects’ – for instance as they move around and feed, they create clearings in wooded areas, which lets new plants grow and forests regenerate naturally. However, having roamed the wild for 15 million years, today, this iconic species faces the biggest threats to its survival due to ivory poaching, human-wildlife conflict and habitat destruction.   FACTS ABOUT ELEPHANTS Elephants walk at the pace of their slowest member. The  infants are always surrounded by nurturing members of the herd and their young babies