SLIDE 14
That's the entrance of the calf into the birth
canal. In Calgary, for a first time mother, there were seven
hours between the appearance of that bulge and the baby dropping
to the floor. So we thought we had a lot of time. I was called
at home; yeah, it sounds like things were happening. I drove
in, I was here pretty quick. I think I set the record for time
I've made it from my house to the Zoo in about 14 minutes, walked
in, took a look, and there was that characteristic bulge in the
backside of Shanthi. I said, "Okay, we'll start sorting
things out." Started moving our elephants around, kind of
cleaning up, very relaxed, confident that we knew what we were
doing, that we were ahead of the game. I turned around and there
was a trunk sticking out of Shanthi's vulva and whoops, it's time.
Let's do something. We barely got containment of Shanthi with
one restraint. Our plan had been to have two elephants together,
Shanthi and Ambika who had spent a number of years together.
All of that went out the window. Ambika wanted no part of what
was going on in this situation. She wanted out of there, so we
let her out of there. And the baby hit the floor with great surprise.
Shanthi holds the record at this point for shortest labor in
an elephant of approximately 22 minutes. Obviously our expectation
was seven hours, so the photo documentation of this birth was
not quite what we had hoped. And in fact, what I'm going to show
you are pictures of a birth that we did get pictures in Calgary.
We didn't get any of Kumari's birth. But let me show you the
sequence that was supposed to happen. First you see this bulge
under the tail, and that bulge gets bigger as the calf - literally
the calf sort of starts here in the uterus, has to go up over
the pelvic bone into this at least one meter long birth canal,
or vestibule, and get that entire 250-325 lb. body through a very
small opening. So there has to be some expansion that goes on.
We think what happened with Shanthi, was that Shanthi is a huge
elephant. She is a very large, over eight feet tall, weighing
8,800 pounds, and her calf at 264 pounds was not that big. So
it really wasn't that hard for her to push that calf out. As
opposed to this elephant in Calgary who weighed 5,600 pounds,
was less than 7 feet tall, and had a 310 lb. calf. So I think
that was the difference. The bulge continues to expand.