The birth of Luk Chai was groundbreaking news as the first elephant in Australia (and indeed the region); while Melbourne similarly enjoyed the accolades that came with producing Mali - their first elephant calf and the first female elephant born in Australia.
Then as we all wondered what Taronga were gonna do for an encore, there was the miracle of Pathi Harn - the birth that rewrote the textbooks and defied scientific knowledge; followed by their first female calf later that year.
In the years that followed, births have become less of an event (the two calves at Dubbo especially passed under the radar). We’ve seen a similar trend in gorilla infants - with the births in the 2010’s at Taronga and Melbourne attracting a fraction of the attention garnered by those in the 1990’s and 2000’s.
A century ago, elephants were something a zoo had one or two of. They were purchased as young as three, which was the closest any zoo would get to exhibiting a calf. Breeding was inconceivable (pun intended). A decade from now, births will be akin to that of a chimpanzee - special, but not international headline grabbing - and contradictory as it may sound, that in itself will be something to celebrate.
