The elephant Ramba rests after arriving to the Brazilian Elephant Sanctuary located at the municipality of Chapada dos Guimaraes, Mato Grosso state, Brazil, on October 18, 2019. – The Asian elephant that spent decades performing in South American circuses has started a new life in an open-air sanctuary in Brazil, after travelling thousands of kilometers by plane and truck from a Chilean zoo. The elephant, estimated to be more than 52 years old, worked in circuses in Argentina and Chile before she was rescued by activists in 2012.
Guillermina the elephant was mourning her mother’s death caused by so far an unidentified chronic illness, five months after it was rescued inside an Argentinean zoo’s concrete pit.
Her mother, Pocha, lived 50 years in the pit which is almost her entire life. According to NewsWeek, she died just five months after she was rescued and transferred to a Brazilian sanctuary with an unknown cause of death.
“She was perfect,” said Scott Blais, co-founder and CEO of Global Sanctuary for Elephants, a charitable organization. “She was one of those elephants that stole my heart from the get-go…. She saw well into your soul when she looked at you.”
After decades spent in captivity at the Ecoparque of Mendoza, formerly the Mendoza Zoological Park, in Argentina, Pocha, 57, and her daughter Guillermina, 24, came to the sanctuary in May 2022.
Life in Captivity
Pocha is thought to have arrived at the zoo in 1968 and was held inside concrete pit for all those years. “That space was just dark, cold, damp, miserable, completely devoid of any stimulation…. She was in there for five decades,” Blais said.
The huge mammals are known to hide their traumas and “have a way of compartmentalizing that suffering”, even tolerate it.
Science Times wrote about the mysterious death of the elephant which are generally thought to live longer in the wild than in captivity.
The poor animals managed to adapt to their new surroundings for around five months evident in their walking, grazing, dusting, and playing behavior. Guillermina even became more nurturing and loving towards her mother and mourned shortly after her death.
Blais said that Pocha’s behavior changed shortly before passing away, as if she knew her time was up.