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gentle lemur

Emmett in the Bull Pen

Elephant complex, Whipsnade, 29th July 2019

Emmett in the Bull Pen
gentle lemur, 4 Aug 2019
yomatibi, joe and amur leopard like this.
    • gentle lemur
      Whipsnade's bull Indian elephant. As you can see, the thick bars make it hard to see him properly: but there is that little dip in the front fence because of the pool on the other side of it - so I had to wait some time until he was in the right part of the pen for this photograph. The bull barn is up the hill to the left and the grass paddock to the right. Emmett was sharing this area with his young son. Sam.
      Sarus Crane likes this.
    • Sarus Crane
      How big is Emmett? I've seen images of him over the years and he looks rather small for a bull. Is he a Sumatran or Malayan elephant? His head doesn't have much definition and his tusks seem slim.
    • gentle lemur
      @Sarus Crane I find that it's very hard to compare sizes of animals at different zoos. It's particularly true of Emmett because I have only seen him at some distance, and until my most recent visit to Whipsnade, on his own (always in a separate enclosure from the cows) and through bars or wires as well. I would guess that he is a pretty average size and he certainly has a typical Asian bull conformation with long front legs and high shoulders. He was born at Rosamond Gifford Zoo in 1991. I don't know if any information is available about the origins of his parents.
    • Hyak_II
      A little late to the party, but Emmett is a mixed subspecies animal, his sire a Mainland asian and his mother a Sri Lankan animal, which is the cause for his smaller, more slender tusks.

      His sire is a fairly "squat" bull as well, however neither of them are particularly small, they just look to be so because of their builds.
      Sarus Crane likes this.
    • Sarus Crane
      @Hyak_II What do you think his dimensions are? (Height & Weight)
    • Sarus Crane
      @Hyak_II Does hybrid vigor apply to elephants crossbreeding from different subspecies?
    • gentle lemur
      @Sarus Crane I couldn't make a worthwhile estimate of any of his measurements, for reasons explained above. As he has just been moved to Blackpool, there may be some figures available on their website.
      In theory hybrid vigour could apply to different subspecies as it would to animals of the same subspecies from different localities; but of course there are numerous examples of reclassifications where two subspecies are split into separate species or lumped together, so I am wary of generalisations.
      Sarus Crane likes this.
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  • Category:
    ZSL Whipsnade Zoo
    Uploaded By:
    gentle lemur
    Date:
    4 Aug 2019
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    Date / Time:
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