Hello everyone I was just on the elephant database website I discovered something very shocking that I just thought I'd run by everyone to see if it was true I discovered Sithami the elephant was only 7 years old when she gave birth to Sundara, that would mean she got pregnant at 5 - 6 years old :O ! Also, I discovered that Sundara AND Sithami's father is Chang, meaning Sithami bred with her father and that Sundara is an inbred :S ? Please tell me this is not true and that Im just imagining
this is more common than you might think in captivity. You'd probably be very surprised how few founder individuals some species of animals in zoos have.
It was Chang. One generation of inbreeding (while obviously not ideal) is unlikely to cause any serious problems - but I'm sure they'll be careful not to let Sundara breed with any of Chang's male descendents!
Absolutely correct. Chester obviously had no idea she could breed so young or she would have been seperated from her father Chang. She was only halfgrown when she had the calf. Her own mother Thi had recently lost a calf and shared in the rearing of Sundara- in fact she partially adopted her- the calf suckled from both females- keepers told me it was about 60/40 in favour of Thi. They formed a close subgroup and I think many visitors thought Thi was the mother of both 'calves'. There have been a few other instances of such very early Elephant births in Zoos. The zoos usually take steps to avoid it when they can. In Sithami's case, she appears to have continued to grow normally since the birth of Sundara and, some years later now, I believe is now expecting her 2nd one.
There are a couple of rather young female Elephants at Hannover Zoo due to give birth soon , not certain if this was planned .
Female asian elephant Kaveri was 4 1/2 when she got pregnant from the huge Bull Siam at Paris Zoo. She gave birth in 1990 and this is well documented, therefore I would think that Chester could have known that such early pregnancies are possible.
Possibly with Sithami being their first born female to survive to breeding age, maybe Chester didn't think she would become receptive at such a young age. Anyways, Sundara was a 'happy accident'.
Similair cases is Hannibal, an Asian elephant at Copenhagen Zoo (Zoologisk Have) and a couple of Ramat Gan elephants like Jumaane (Laci), an African Bush elephant at Sosto Zoo (Nyiregyhazi Allatpark)
I suspect that was exactly the reason. I wouldn't call it unprofessional(from a previous post) as they were obviously taken by surprise and they have ensured that there is no repetition with 'Sundara.'
It was still very early days for elephant breeding and I think noone was prepared for the sharp contrast in sexual maturity (ie ability to concieve) between captive-born and wild-born elephants. I would not say this was unprofessional on Chester's part, however what would have been unprofessional is if Chester had split up the herd thus requiring more rotational use of enclosure space for no good reason, which they quite rightly didn't do. Once it was discovered that female calves of a certain age risked being successfully mated by their fathers, that was clearly a good reason to split them up.
