Last week, an elephant named Soutine was crossing a river in Kenya with her 3-week-old calf when the worst thing happened — the newborn calf lost his balance and was swept downstream by raging waters.
She takes several big leaps through the water before she can catch her calf with her outstretched trunk. But her baby continues to struggle — the current keeps pulling him away from his mom, and he seems to have trouble keeping his trunk above water to breathe.
While the video is heartwarming, the clip isn’t just about a mother elephant saving her baby — it also shows the sad effects of elephant poaching. Soutine’s own mother, Chagall, was likely killed by poachers for her ivory, and Soutine has struggled to raise her first calf without her mother’s help and guidance.
“We never found her body, as with many elephants who went missing outside the National Reserves in northern Kenya,” David Daballen, head of operations at Save the Elephants, told The Dodo. “The likelihood that Chagall was poached was very high as she disappeared at the height of the poaching crisis, and almost three quarters of all dead elephants we found at this time had been killed for their ivory.”
“We immediately knew something was wrong when we saw Chagall’s two young calves without their mother, hanging with a group called the Zodiacs who were unrelated to Chagall’s maternal group, the Artists,” Daballen added. “Despite searching, we never found Chagall.”
“When an elephant is killed, especially an older female, it’s not necessarily just that individual elephant that suffers,” Daballen said. “Her death can affect an entire family — young elephants are left as orphans, inexperienced females suffer without the knowledge and experience passed down to them and their calves suffer as well.”
“The most heartbreaking thing is watching such a young mother struggling to raise her young calf without any help,” Daballen said. “As an orphan, Soutine doesn’t have the guidance or support of older females or her mother and has to go through this huge learning curve alone.”
“When poachers remove the elder females from the herd — the ones with all the experience and knowledge which they would normally pass down through the generations — it’s often the inexperienced young females who suffer,” Daballen added. “Soutine and her baby are prime examples.”
Soutine and her baby emerging safely from the river | Matt Brierley/Save The Elephants
Despite not having Chagall, Soutine is proving to be a competent and very caring mother — and the video shows that Soutine will do everything she can to protect her calf.