Jumbo error: Sydney's baby elephant not dead after all (Roundup)

Mar 10, 2010, 7:27 GMT

Sydney - Jubilation was mingled with embarrassment Wednesday when an elephant at Sydney's Taronga Zoo gave birth to a seemingly healthy baby that three days earlier tearful keepers declared had died in his mother's womb.

'While this is incredible news, the young calf still has a long way to go,' zoo director Cameron Kerr said. 'There are no guarantees of its long-term survival at this early stage, but we hope that its birth against the odds will stand it in good stead.'

The calf drank several litres of colostrum, the important first milk for newborns, and was moving around its birthing pen, watched over by an affectionate mother, Porntip, and other members of the herd.

Keepers who had cared for 18-year-old Porntip during her 22-month pregnancy were distraught Monday when it was announced the foetus had died while the Thai-born Asian elephant was in labour.

Ultrasounds had shown there was no heartbeat, the amniotic fluid was cloudy and that the five other elephants in the enclosure displayed behaviour consistent with a death in the family.

Berlin Zoo's Thomas Hildebrand, who had flown in from Germany for the birth, declared the foetus had no chance of survival because it was lying upside down in the birth canal.

Hildebrand, a world expert on captive elephant births, said the other elephants would have sensed the death of the foetus and gone into mourning.

Patently, Hildebrand got it wrong.

Senior vet Larry Vogelnest admitted he was astonished when he learned Porntip, which means 'blessing from heaven' in Thai, had given birth to a 100-kilogram baby.

'The early indications are that the calf survived the protracted labour in a coma,' he said. 'The unconscious state would explain the complete absence of any vital signs during all the checks and examinations we conducted during the labour and led us to believe the calf had not survived.'

The zoo, in a statement reporting that everything was going well, said, 'The others are very excited and curious, reaching out to him with their trunks whenever he gets close.'

Porntip is already showing signs of being an excellent mother, the statement said. 'She's in good health and has been getting to know her calf, gently touching the young animal with her trunk,' it said.