An elephant in Kenya has given birth to twins, a rare occurrence for the world’s largest land mammals, according to a conservation group.
Save the Elephants stated that the twins, both female, were born in the Samburu National Reserve in northern Kenya to a mother named Alto, characterizing it as “double joy.”
Twins account for just around 1% of elephant births, yet another pair — one male and one female — was born in the same area in early 2022. African elephants have the longest gestation period of any living mammal, lasting about 22 months, and give birth every four years.
Elephant twins, on the other hand, do not always fare well. A previous pair of twins born in Samburu in 2006 died after only a few days.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has classed the African savannah elephant as endangered, claiming that poaching and habitat destruction have had a disastrous effect on elephant numbers in Africa as a whole.
According to the Kenya Wildlife Service, the East African country has over 36,000 elephants, with efforts to combat poaching preventing a drop in population.
The report indicated, the elephant population in Kenya stood at 170,000 in the 1970s and early 1980s before plummeting to 16,000 by the end of 1989 due to the demand for ivory.
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