Mother and rare twin baby elephants are doing well after a tumultuous birth in Thailand.
Chamchuri gave birth to the couple – a male and a female – on the night of June 7 at a camp in the ancient capital of Ayutthaya, a popular tourist destination 80 kilometers north of Bangkok.
Births of twin elephants are rare and mixed twins are even rarer.
The Ayutthaya Elephant Palace & Royal Kraal, which houses the newborns, said it was a first in the province, while a Thai government statement said it was the third such pair in the world.
These are the fourth and fifth children of the 30-year-old mother elephant.
Elephant camp keepers expected to help deliver a baby, but were left in shock when a second offspring emerged from its mother’s womb 18 minutes later.
The keepers, called mahouts in Asia, had to act quickly to prevent the equally frightened mother from accidentally harming her new daughter.
One of the mahouts broke his leg while interposing between the mother and her offspring to avoid tragedy.
Elephants are an integral part of Thai identity and have been officially proclaimed symbols of the nation.
Thai kings fought on the backs of elephants, and a white elephant, considered a sacred symbol of royal power, adorned the Thai flag until 1917.
Once essential to the timber trade, deforestation has deprived many elephants of their jobs.
As a shrinking population of wild elephants roams the remaining forests, many of them are kept in animal shelters or used as live props at tourist sites.
