In a video of this special moment, the small calf, whom rescuers have named Yoyo, doesn’t stray too far from his mom — but he flaps his ears and waves his trunk around in excitement. Yatta also brought her firstborn daughter, Yetu, for the visit, who stands watch near her new little brother.
“She’s a proud momma,” caretakers said about Yatta. “And in a show of absolute trust and affection, she brought her newest baby back to meet the people who saved her.”
“We have not only saved an orphan baby and raised her, but she has successfully returned to the wild and started her own family,” Brandford said. “For elephants, family is everything — so it’s no surprise that they choose to share their new family member with their former human carers, for they are part of their family.”
“Imagine our delight when she chose to share her second birth with us, returning to her former stockades and her human family, so that we could be a part of celebrating the arrival of her new baby — a healthy little boy,” caretakers added in an update.
The celebration wasn’t over, however — the caretakers soon noticed that two of Yatta’s adopted orphan “sisters” who live alongside her had also given birth to calves that same month, bringing DSWT’s total count of wild-born babies to 28.
She is now one of more than 100 orphaned elephants returned to the wild by DSWT, which also has a field team that patrols wild habitats to keep the animals safe from poachers.