COIMBATORE: In a dramatic turn of events, a post-mortem carried out on the mother elephant on Wednesday morning revealed that the animal was pregnant. A team of veterinarians also found a 12- to 16-month-old male foetus at Maruthamalai foothill near Coimbatore.
The gestation period for a female elephant is 21 to 22 months. One of the veterinarians admitted that they were unaware of the pregnancy despite having assessed the elephant's health. They discovered it only during the post-mortem.
The elephant could have died due to the failure of internal organs like the liver and heart, which may have occurred a few months ago. That is believed to be the reason the animal fell sick near the forest boundary at Maruthamalai foothill. The foetus will be sent to the Advanced Institute for Wildlife Conservation (AIWC) in Chennai.
In yet another shocking revelation for animal lovers, a few plastic bags were also found in the intestines of the mother elephant. This clearly indicates that the animal had browsed leftover food at the dump yard where waste from Somayampalayam Panchayat had been dumped for more than five years.
A video of the mother elephant browsing in the dump yard is also circulating on social media. Despite the dumping of garbage posing a significant threat to wild animals, especially elephants, whose population has increased in the last five years, only on Monday (May 19) did the Panchayat stop dumping waste, based on a direction from Coimbatore District Collector G. Giriiyappanavar.
According to sources, despite four experienced veterinarians, who had worked in tiger reserves in Tamil Nadu and a forest division, assessing the elephant’s health for four days, they could not determine the pregnancy.
The elephant had been fixed in a sling and lifted using a crane on Sunday (May 18), a day after it fell sick in a lateral recumbent position at Maruthamalai foothill. It was given hydrotherapy on Tuesday.
It was heartbreaking to see the calf elephant trying to wake up its mother on Saturday evening. A video of this moment also went viral on social media.
N. Sadiq Ali, Founder of Wildlife and Nature Conservation (WNCT) Trust, said, “It is sad that the veterinary team did not notice the animal and concentrated only on improving animal health.
It is time to provide the latest gadgets to the veterinary team to assess the animal’s health, as well as keep an all-equipped ambulance facility at the spot wherever the elephants fall ill at the earliest.
In this regard, the state government should allot funds for the veterinary team, and that would be helpful for saving the animals in distress.”
“Two years ago, we petitioned the then-district collector to take steps to order the local bodies to manage their waste as per the solid waste management rules since wild animals are moving in several areas across Coimbatore district,” said Sadiq Ali.
“In 2022 itself, we had noticed masks, plastic bags and sanitary napkins, etc., in elephant dung at Maruthamalai Hill Road. Despite appeals to close the dump yard, the Panchayat had continued, resulting in the loss of the precious lives of the mother and the calf elephant. We are happy that currently, the Panchayat is in the process of filling soil over the dumped waste. The animals would be happy if the Panchayat stopped dumping the waste again,” said P. Shanmugasundaram, Secretary of the Coimbatore Wildlife Conservation Trust (CWCT).