(Nairobi) – An elephant has given birth to twins in Kenya, a rather rare event for the largest land mammals, the Society for the Protection of these Endangered Species announced on Friday.
The “Save the Elephants” organization said that the two young elephants were born in the Samburu National Reserve, in the north of this East African country, to a female named Alto, who was delighted with this “double joy.”
Twinnings account for only about 1% of elephant births, but the Samburu sanctuary saw the birth of two more twin elephant calves – a male and a female – in early 2022.
In a video clip posted by Save the Elephants on its X account (formerly Twitter), we can see the two young elephants breastfeeding their mother, in the presence of other members of the group.
Elephants have the longest gestation period of any mammal, carrying their young for approximately 22 months and giving birth approximately every four years.
Elephant twins don’t always survive: twins born in Samburu in 2006 only survived a few days.
There are more than 36,000 elephants in Kenya, according to figures from the first national census of all wildlife in the country conducted in 2021.
This figure represents a 12% increase over the population recorded in 2014, when poaching for ivory was highest.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) warned in 2021 that poaching and habitat destruction, particularly due to land conversion for agriculture, were having a devastating impact on elephant populations across Africa.
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