An elephant has given birth to twin girls in Kenya, a fairly rare occurrence for the largest land mammal, an association for the protection of this endangered species announced on Friday, November 24.
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The two baby elephants were born in the Samburu national reserve, in the north of this East African country, to a female named Alto, said the Save the Elephants organization, welcoming this “ double joy “.
Twinning cases only represent about 1% of elephant births, but the Samburu reserve saw the birth of two more twin elephant calves – a male and a female – in early 2022.
In a video posted by Save the Elephants on its X account (formerly Twitter), we can see the two baby elephants suckling their mother, in the presence of other individuals in the group.
Hooray! Yet another set of twins (both female) have been born in Samburu National Reserve almost two years after Bora from the Winds gave birth to twins for the first time in decades. Meet Alto’s double joy who were first spotted by our researchers this week.
🎥 Gilbert Sabinga pic.twitter.com/A3y6n8NLjg
— Save the Elephants (@ste_kenya) November 24, 2023
Elephants have the longest gestation period of any mammal, carrying their young for almost 22 months and giving birth approximately every four years.
Elephant twins don’t always survive: twins born in Samburu in 2006 only survived a few days.
There are more than 36,000 elephants in Kenya, according to figures from the first national census of all the country’s wildlife carried out in 2021.
This figure represents an increase of 12% compared to the population recorded in 2014, when poaching for ivory was higher.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) warned in 2021 that poaching and habitat destruction, particularly due to land conversion for agriculture, was having a devastating effect on the number of elephants across Africa.
(With AFP)