An abandoned baby elephant that was found drowning in a muddy well in Kenya has been rescued.
On May 18, villagers in Raku Bula, Merti, in the Cherab Community Conservancy, came across the trapped elephant calf.
After alerting the Northern Rangelands Trust and other local authorities, villagers worked together to save the calf, heaving him out of the well. The Northern Rangelands Trust said in a statement that the elephant was in a “serious condition.”
There were still no sightings of the calf’s family nearby, so community members kept a “watch over him.”
An air helicopter from the Kenya Wildlife Service was called to the scene, which took the abandoned calf to the Sheldrick Elephant Orphanage in Nairobi.
Elephants are highly social animals, and emotionally complex. Young elephants will usually stay with their families until they are at least 16 years old. It is not often that mothers will abandon their calf, however if the mother is unable to rescue them from such incidents, they are often forced to move on, leaving the calf behind.
The baby elephant was found stuck in thick mud before he was rescued. Somo Gollo Guyo