Baby was the star attraction — and knew it

DUBLIN Zoo’s Kaziranga Rainforest Trail, the new home for Asian elephants, was opened last week by the Taoiseach.

The elephants are among Bertie’s constituents and, as everybody knows, they never forget anything. It’s the wise politician who keeps them on board. Bertie, I am told, takes a keen interest in developments at the zoo. When he opened the Waldrapp Ibis Cliff there, a few years ago, I interviewed him for the Mooney Show. He seemed well informed about the birds.

The new elephant enclosure is an exhibit in itself. It’s approached through an imaginatively landscaped path which winds past a swiftly flowing stream and waterfall to a viewing stand, behind which a little playground has been created for toddlers, an inspired piece of planning. The elephants have two deep-water pools in which to bathe. Following the opening ceremony, the four-year-old female, an elephant teenager, gave a bravura swimming performance for the enthralled crowd, totally disappearing under water from time to time.

But the star attraction was the tiny baby, the first elephant to be born in the Republic, though not in Ireland; that honour goes to Belfast Zoo. Dublin’s little rascal seemed thrilled by all the attention she received and ran about excitedly to the uhs and ahs of the onlookers. This will be a spoilt child if ever there was one!

The teenager and the two adult female elephants, one pregnant, hail from Rotterdam Zoo. The second baby, expected in March, will bring the Dublin herd to five. Then, hopefully, a male will be introduced. Females and calves live in herds, but mature males live solitary lives, only approaching females to mate. Dublin’s bull will live in an adjoining, but separate, facility which still needs to be built. It is possible, however, that he could join the herd. According to team leader Gerry Creighton, some male elephants live quite happily with females in zoos; it all depends on the temperament of the particular individual.

Gerry and his team carefully monitored the behaviour of the elephants during their big day, checking for signs of anxiety. There have not been visits by the public until now and some nervousness on the part of the animals was to be expected. Although, to the layperson, the mother did not seem in the least perturbed by all the fuss, Gerry and his team felt that she was becoming a bit edgy as the day wore on and thought it best to bring the animals indoors in the late afternoon just to be on the safe side. The elephants are kept indoors at night but, ultimately, it is hoped to allow them to come and go freely on a 24-hour basis.

The huge elephant house has state-of-the-art facilities. Feeding holes are built into the walls. Food is placed at different locations each day and the animals must insert their trunks through the holes and rummage for food just as they would do in the wild. Branches of trees are suspended overhead on pulleys; the elephants reach up and tear at them as if they were in an Asian forest. According to Gerry, elephants’ feet are prone to infections; the Dublin animals are trained to present their feet for inspection each day. A pedicure can be applied if necessary. The best substrate for their feet is sand and the base of the new facility has a layer of it, metres deep.

While the elephants are the zoo’s star attraction at present, there are many other interesting things to see. The red-river hogs have bred and a beautiful male calf, the latest addition to the giraffe herd, can be viewed. He was born last May, bringing to five the number of giraffes in Dublin. According to giraffe keeper John O’Connor, up to a dozen animals can be accommodated comfortably in Dublin and there are plans to expand the herd over the next few years. Like the elephants, giraffes are vegetarians which target leaves high up in trees.

The elephant’s ancestors solved the height problem by transforming their noses and upper lips into highly versatile limbs. These animal equivalents of a military tank are strong enough to bend tree trunks, bringing high branches within reach. Giraffes rely on stretching to get at their food; hence the long neck and legs. The head can swivel upwards, giving extra reach, and the tongue, which can slide between the trees’ lethal thorns, adds a further 45cm to the stretch. The elephant solution to the feeding problem seems more sophisticated than the giraffe’s, whose long neck places its brain far from the heart, requiring massive pressure to supply it with blood. This limits giraffe brain development. With no such constraint on brain size, the elephant has become one of the world’s most intelligent animals. Still, the giraffe’s way of doing things has much to recommend it; a lighter animal needs less food. It does not damage trees and is far less destructive of the habitat than its more powerful rival.