Elephant Baby Battles Herd To Get Mom's Milk

In an elephant herd, some members may not be as strong or as healthy as others, but everyone is part of the family, without exception. Sick or injured elephants are surrounded by the others and encouraged to stand, for instance. Elephants use their trunks to massage the weak elephant's shoulders and head. They also use their trunks to prod sick elephants to their feet and will attempt to use their bodies to support that of an injured or sick elephant. When traveling, healthy elephants often turn and look back at their slower herd mates, stopping and waiting for those elephants to catch up before continuing to move forward. Elephants are well known for their compassion and empathy towards others and just like humans they experience joy, grief, and a whole array of emotions. It is easy to guess how an elephant is feeling just by one short look at its face.

But not always. There too in the elephant heard are tricks and power games members play on each other. Elephants have the reputation of the sages of the animal world and it is not strange to put this wisdom into use when moving the piece of the elephant dominance chessboard to their advantage. For illustration, this is how smart they are: they were seen using tools such as sticks to get to ticks, palm leaves to drive away flies. As the Institute of Nature Institute notes, "many young elephants in the wilderness develop mischievous habits to clog a wooden bell that they wear around their necks, with dirt or clay so that they do not make noise during banana rides on the farm at night." Elephants steal bananas, while the owner of the farm quietly sleeps and does not hear the robber.

These are the Elephants from the Chester Zoo in Cheshire, England. With four cute calves in the herd and all different ages it can be quite challenging to get to mother’s milk and queuing is not one of their strong points.

When you haven't got any patience, you just push the other one out of the way. Aayu the older male of the calves is nursing first when the one-month-old baby Anjan pushes in and get swiftly pushed out of the way again by Aayu, but then he gets pushed away by the bigger female Indali as she decided she wanted some of mom’s milk too. Aayu thinks maybe pushing backward helps but he just gets a shove up his backside from Indali. Little Anjan tries its luck again when Nandita is suckling but gets pushed away. This time mom intervenes with her trunk and kicks out. With the elephants, there is a lot of pushing and shoving going on.

Chester Zoo has got seven Elephants, including four calves in the herd of the Hi Way family. They are: Thi (born 24.04.1981), Sithami (born 31.12.1997), Sundara born 07.03.2004), Nandita (born 20.08.2015), Aayu (born 18.01.2017), Indali (born 17.12.2016) and the new arrival Anjan (born . 17th of May 2018) They also have Anjans dad Aung Bo (born 17.07.2001) and female Maya the oldest born 1966.

Habitat loss and fragmentation is the biggest threat to the Asian elephants. Also, scientists at the zoo leading the global fight against the elephant disease called endotheliotropic herpesvirus, also known as EEHV which there is currently no cure for.

You can see more of this wonderful Elephant family in this video here on Rumble at: https://rumble.com/v5ppkd-poor-newborn-baby-elephant-gets-knocked-over-by-his-big-bully-brother.html