Couple of african elephants "Dandara" and "Jamba", who arrived from Botswana in 1998. "Dandara" died in 2010 while giving birth to a stillborn whose father was "Jamba".
Couple of african elephants "Dandara" and "Jamba", who arrived from Botswana in 1998. "Dandara" died in 2010 while giving birth to a stillborn whose father was "Jamba".
@Enzo The zoo keeps three african elephants nowadays; the only male, "Jamba", is still alive (he's around 22 yrs old) and living in the front public exhibit. Behind his enclosure, there's a partially visible exhibit holding the females "Beré" and "Axé". "Beré" is a very lovely and polite old lady, who arrived in 1977, and was the first african elephant to give birth in South America, wich happened in the beggining of the 80's. The baby was a stillborn, but a few years later, in 1987, she gave birth to "Axé", who was the first baby african elephant to be born alive in South America. After that, "Beré" gave birth to another baby, "Chocolate", who lives nowadays at Brasília zoo.
Axé and Chocolate's father was Joca, a bull which lived at the Belo Horizonte zoo. He died in 1995, because he ingested plastic bottles thrown at his enclosure by tourists. His skeleton is/was on display at the PUC Minas Natural Science Museum. Axé and Beré were the first African elephants to breed in Latin America.
@Enzo
Yes, There was an elephant called "Joca", indeed. He was "Beré's" mate. She didn't reproduce anymore after his death in 1995. If you wanna see how he looked, here's an old picture from the zoo's archive:
His skeleton is still at PUC Minas museum indeed, as well as the skeleton of an asian elephant called "Margarete", who also lived in BH zoo a long time ago, when the zoo kept african and asian elephants together. Check out a picture from these times:
About "Dandara", she was indeed a little known elephant at the zoo. There's not much about her on internet. Although I've seen her quite a few times, all I know about her are things the zoo's crew told me about. Her body has been taxydermized in PUC museum, but isn't for display due to some problems of decomposition in her skin that happened after the proccess of preservation. I've posted a picture that I took of her taxidermy during a visit to the museum's backstage here in zoochat, check it out too:
Ah, and I think you missunderstood at the end of your comment, that "Beré" and "Axé" were the first to reproduce in Latin America, once it's actually "Joca" and "Beré" who did it, and there's no official register that they were the first in Latin America to breed, but in South America for sure. and "Axé" is a female, and she's their older offspring.
@Enzo "Jamba" was supposed to become a father when "Dandara" got pregnant in 2008, but as I said, she unfortunately died during the proccess, and also did the baby.
@Enzo Yes, and the zoo would probably have continued their elephant breeding program if this one had worked... For now, as I told you, the females are kept separated from the male. I hope they join them again in a near future.
