What does a nut job activist want!!!!! Elephant dies of old age.

Cape Town - The elephant cow that provoked an outcry from an animal rights group when it was spotted, apparently distressed and in pain, on an Mpumalanga game reserve's live webcam a fortnight ago, has died.

"The elephant cow died yesterday [Sunday] afternoon of natural causes, i.e. old age," Djuma Private Game Reserve owner Jurie Moolman told Sapa in an e-mail on Monday.

The cow, which last week managed to rejoin its herd, had been at the end of its natural life, with her last set of teeth worn to the point of not being able to chew her food.

Looking out for her calf

"She kept up with the herd, and it is difficult not to think that she had one last thing to do before she died - ensuring that her calf was accepted into the herd. Her calf is with the herd and seems to be doing well.

"Hopefully this is a lesson to us all about interfering; we should not, unless humans caused the suffering," Moolman said.

Djuma is one of more than a dozen lodges and reserves that make up the 65 000 hectare Sabi Sand Reserve, which shares an unfenced 50km border with the Kruger National Park.

On Monday last week, the group Animal Rights Africa demanded that the reserve's owners help the elephant.

According to the group, the elephant was suffering with what appeared to be birth complications.

The Sabi Sand Reserve has a "policy of non-intervention when it comes to animals in distress not caused by humans", but its ecological committee decided to take action in this case.

Could not chew food

When the animal was found by rangers, it was seen to be suffering from old age and constipation.

"It was determined that she is very old - so old that her teeth are too worn for her to masticate her food properly, and thus a bolus of unchewed food is blocking her alimentary canal," Moolman said at the time.

At one point there were plans to euthanise the elephant, but it was granted a reprieve when it rejoined its herd. It was closely monitored over the past week.

The cow - which has a three-year-old calf - was estimated to be between 50 and 60 years of age, an advanced age for an elephant.

Moolman reported the calf was no longer suckling and should have no problems surviving without its mother.
African elephants, the world's largest land mammals, die more often of starvation than old age.

They go through five sets of teeth in their lives, but once these are gone - worn away by the up to 250kg of bark, leaves and twigs an adult elephant chews its way through in a day - they are no longer able to eat.

Story courtesy of Joey Ratliff
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Joey ask's a very, very valid question: "Now the animal righters want to get involved with nature? I thought "natural life" was perfect for elephants." That is exactly what I thought they have been broadcasting for year's. Now it seems like "their Garden of Eden" is flawed, and they want to tell someone smarter and more qualified then they are how to fix that too. I would like to suggest that instead of wasting time picketing, each and every activist pick one animal that they can volunteer their time to and become "caretaker O the week" for that animal. They can spend that week pulling him out of hole's he may have fallen into, chasing away anything trying to eat him, preventing anything from fighting him with some timeouts, etc. etc. At the end of the week, the activists just rotate to a new/different animal to protect and watch out for. They should be able to stay busy with that for a long, long time, leaving the folks qualifed to make the proper decisions alone.