A video of the sweet moment, originally filmed in 2016, was posted in Reddit’s “Interesting As F**k” forum by u/Abhirup_0, who wrote: “Mother elephant can’t wake baby who’s asleep and asks the keepers for help.” It has amassed over 51,000 upvotes and hundreds of comments from charmed Redditors who loved watching the wholesome interaction. You can view the video here.
The video opens with the mother walking toward her calf, Maxmilián, who is passed out in the grass of a manicured enclosure. She sniffs him with her trunk, but he doesn’t move, so the mother turns around and enlists the help of her keepers.
When the keepers arrive, she points them in the direction of Maxmilián. One stays with her while the other walks over to the calf who is still snoozing in the sun and shakes him by the rear end with his hand for several seconds. Finally, Maxmilián jumps up and runs over to his mother, and both the elephants and the keepers walk off-camera together.
A video showing the sweet moment a mother elephant “asked” zookeepers to help wake her sleeping calf has gone viral. atosan/istock
The zoo explained in 2016 that Maxmilián was tired from spending most of his day playing in his outdoor enclosure.
“After a whole day’s ‘hard work’ he sometimes falls asleep so soundly that even his mother [can’t] wake him up and the keepers have to step in,” the zoo said, according to a provided translation.
Elephant Sleeping Patterns
As it turns out, elephants don’t get much sleep. In fact, Paul Manger, a professor at the University of the Witwatersrand, told the BBC that they are the “shortest sleeping mammal,”
Captive elephants tend to sleep four to six hours a day, whereas wild elephants only get about two hours of sleep per day, the BBC explained. Further, elephants, in general, only appear to enter rapid eye movement sleep (REM sleep) every three to four days.
“Why this occurs, we’re not really sure. Sleep is one of those really unusual mysteries of biology, that along with eating and reproduction, it’s one of the biological imperatives. We must sleep to survive,” Manger said.
Considering how comfortable little Maxmilián looked in the Prague Zoo’s video, it’s possible he was experiencing REM sleep and, as one Redditor suggested, “dreaming about peanuts.”