Elephant Family Grows Again at Disney's Animal Kingdom

LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. (PRNewswire) – The Walt Disney World Resort's animal care team welcomed a 233-pound bundle of joy to Disney's Animal Kingdom earlier this week. The female African elephant calf arrived early Monday morning, and joins her 21-year-old mother Donna after 21 months in the womb. The calf has not yet been named. Both the calf and her mother are doing well according to veterinarians and elephant managers, who are cautiously optimistic about the calf's likelihood for survival. The first-time mother experienced a very short labor, lasting approximately 16 minutes. With assistance from the animal care team, the newborn became comfortable using her "newly-discovered" legs and began nursing successfully from Mom soon after her birth. She is already feisty and very active. Going forward, the focus of the elephant managers and veterinarians at Disney's Animal Kingdom will be on the health and welfare of the calf and her mother. In the near future, Guests will be able to see the calf's progress on camera monitors at Rafiki's Planet Watch at Disney's Animal Kingdom. It will be several weeks before the calf and her mother will join other elephants on the savanna. Breeding African elephants is a challenging process, so it is especially exciting that this is the third African elephant to be born at Disney's Animal Kingdom Theme Park. A male calf, Tufani, was born in May 2003 and has gained nearly 1,500 pounds in his first two and a half years, and Kianga, a female born in July 2004, has gained more than 500 pounds in her first year. Because many of the elephants giving birth in zoos and wildlife parks are first-time mothers – just as several of the elephant cows at Disney's Animal Kingdom are – it is not unusual for the animals (both in the wild and in wildlife parks) to lose their first calf. Animal care experts at DAK are optimistic that observation and interaction with Tufani have helped the other elephants gain additional maternal knowledge, thus improving the success rate for the Animal Kingdom breeding program.