I look forward to more people weighing in to discussions on this blog. Here in Australia we get to see comparatively few elephants. The only elephants that I have seen with sunken temples have been old and/or ill animals.
ABC News Monday, May 14, 2007. 1:00pm (AEST)
The youngest elephant at Perth Zoo has been put down after an exhaustive battle to save her life.
Officials say 17 year-old Teduh(standing in the photo above, on the right with the sunken skull next to an elephant with a sunken skill on the left) has suffered from muscular skeletal weakness for years, making it difficult for her to lie down and get up.
The condition also meant she lacked co-ordination in using her trunk.
The Zoo's Chief Executive Susan Hunt says the muscular problem(genetic or environmental, Steve) continued to get worse, and recently Teduh developed abdominal pain and lost her appetite.
"The decision was made after exhaustive medical efforts to assist Teduh who had a long standing medical condition involving generalised muscular skeletal weakness," she said.
"Over the past week, our veterinary team has done everything possible including administering fluids and anti-inflammatories in a concerted effort to see if we could turn things around."
"Unfortunately, Teduh's condition didn't improve and the decision was made to euthanase her on humane grounds."
Teduh arrived in Perth in 1992 and was the most active of the Zoo's three female Asian Elephants.
"The most active of the Zoo's three female Asian elephants, yet she had muscular skeletal weakness for years?????? As well as a quite sunken skull at the age of 17???
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Interesting that none of the young females at Perth ever bred. Despite the fact that the bull apparently has good sperm motility.
Whether their problems there are genetic or environmental are not known to me.
The enclosure is more than adequate and, in their earlier years, they had highly skilled human supervision.
Certainly Teduh had very sunken temples - and she was fatally ill.
I'm not sure that the adjacent elephant has very sunken temples. A bit, sure, but not very. She is still alive but has not bred - go figure!
With respect to 'Chepam' as she was known to her handlers.Several years ago the zoo's head keeper visited and the story was relayed that for a period of time prior to death that the elephant would collapse.The keeper's were able to manouvre her using a sling and load-all machine to get her on all her feet.They developed this procedure on their own and each time the elephant regained her 'legs' and acted as normal until the next 'collapse'.As far as I understand her cause of death was not found.It seems from a distance she had some form of muscular dystrophy.As a calf she wasn't as strong as the other two and her abilty to achieve physical behaviors was less.Comparing these 3 and another 6 that I have seen trained using the same methods and same trainers being involved,she was definitely weak as a calf and this continued through to her teenage years.She was a lovely elephant and I have calf pictures, and once I can get my scanner out again,I will send them to you.Cheers ay
Glenn
Unemployed elephant guy for two weeks.
Glenn,
That is the direction I have been attempting to go? Possibly things that are blamed on husbandry, bad handling, full moon, etc. etc. are issues they are born with or develop early, early on and as we really know so little about them, they are given excellent care until the reach a mature age yet still die or develop problems totally unrelated to their environment. I look at all of these grotesquely fat over weight baby elephant's today, and have to wonder what happens if they start developing physical problems at the "old" age as Radar would suggests. Do we redo all the new elephant exhibits at a cost of a dozen million dollars to fix the problems and appear the libbers.
Wade
Train people to look after their animals is a start.There is no excuse for fat.I have and assume you have too worked with loads of animals that aren't trained to halter,leash or liberty and they weren't fat.Like they say on Buckles blog 'Nuf ced'.
Cheers ay
Glenn
Glenn,
Just my thought and opinion, but I have looked at thousands of pictures of wild elephant calves, and I haven't ever seen anything that come's close to the "little blimps" that have been popping up around the world in captivity the past few years. As yous state in regards to horse's and other animals, fat isn't a goal. Quite the contrary, back in the 50's if you had a fat baby(even soda was endorsed as a benefit for babies) doctor's would pinch there cheek and commend your parenting. Fast forward to 2011, and the worlds realizing, "boy, were we wrong." You have been around a lot more elephant babies than I have, so I ask again, " are grossly obese elephant babies the way to go, or won't we know for sure until they mature and we wait to see if they break down or not."
Wade
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