North American African Elephant Population 2024

Amahle has given birth at Fresno to a healthy young bull calf. Of course, lovely to see another calf on the ground, and excellent to see that the first time mother is demonstrating good maternal skills, but very discouraging to see yet another male calf sired by Mabu.

Between the multitude of sons from Mabu, and what will undoubtedly be at least four or five sons from Calli, there’s going to be quite a few bachelor bulls to deal with in the future.
 
Hyak_II said:
Amahle has given birth at Fresno to a healthy young bull calf. Of course, lovely to see another calf on the ground, and excellent to see that the first time mother is demonstrating good maternal skills, but very discouraging to see yet another male calf sired by Mabu.

Between the multitude of sons from Mabu, and what will undoubtedly be at least four or five sons from Calli, there’s going to be quite a few bachelor bulls to deal with in the future.
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Dangit, this is really lame for the population, we desperately need more female calves and this is also Mabu's eleventh son. Maybe we can get lucky like we did with Rama at OKC or Kirkja at Toledo and it could be a misgender.
 
Nile Hippo Expert said:
Dangit, this is really lame for the population, we desperately need more female calves and this is also Mabu's eleventh son. Maybe we can get lucky like we did with Rama at OKC or Kirkja at Toledo and it could be a misgender.
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Meh, a calf's a calf. The more calves on the ground, the better their overall welfare is. Happy Nolwazi and Amahle had healthy calves, here's hoping they live amazing lives.
 
I think it’s important to remember too that both of Fresno Chaffee Zoos female African Elephants were in desperate need to conceive. Especially Amahle as until now she never had a calf before. Mabus purpose in talks I had with staff there, he specifically came there to get 2 African elephants pregnant who needed pregnant ASAP. And both births went smoothly which means in the future we also now know Nolwazi can still carry a pregnancy to full term, and as for Amahle the same thing. As we saw just recently with the Asian Elephant population in the U.S. with the premature birth of Asha’s calf, not all pregnancies go well with Elephants. And also I know during my last visit there too to Fresno, this isn’t going to be either (at least if all goes well), Nolwazis and Amahles last calves either.

and fortunately for Fresno unlike with other zoos (take North Carolina), Fresno has a proven, reproductive bull too. In my opinion I just think the future of African Elephants at Fresno Chaffee Zoo isn’t bleak.
 
John Marchwick said:
I think it’s important to remember too that both of Fresno Chaffee Zoos female African Elephants were in desperate need to conceive. Especially Amahle as until now she never had a calf before. Mabus purpose in talks I had with staff there, he specifically came there to get 2 African elephants pregnant who needed pregnant ASAP. And both births went smoothly which means in the future we also now know Nolwazi can still carry a pregnancy to full term, and as for Amahle the same thing. As we saw just recently with the Asian Elephant population in the U.S. with the premature birth of Asha’s calf, not all pregnancies go well with Elephants. And also I know during my last visit there too to Fresno, this isn’t going to be either (at least if all goes well), Nolwazis and Amahles last calves either.

and fortunately for Fresno unlike with other zoos (take North Carolina), Fresno has a proven, reproductive bull too. In my opinion I just think the future of African Elephants at Fresno Chaffee Zoo isn’t bleak.
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Exactly, while yet another male Mabu calf is certianly disappointing (and imo is really proof that he needs to retire for a bit :p), these are very valuable cows and NOT getting calves out of them asap would've been far worse for the population in the long term than another bull.

What's also promising is these young calves will grow up in a natural social setting and are very close in age, the ideal setting for all elephants, especially young bulls.
 
How does 1 bull so consistently produce male calves?

My understanding of the birds and bees is that, since half of the sperm have an X and Y chromosome, a prolific elephant would have a split of sons and daughters.
 
Frankie_number_1_fan said:
It's worth noting that Mabu hasn't sired overwhelmingly male offspring. I went ahead and looked at his calves and he's sired 10 bull calves and 8 cow calves. Not horribly off from being 50/50. Just this year he had a female calf born as well.
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True, he is just plain prolific!
I do agree that calves on the ground were essential here. I also note that bachelor facilities are really going to be important for the African population in the US.
I wonder if any of the Mabu bull calves would be valuable exports to Europe?
 
MidwestFan said:
True, he is just plain prolific!
I do agree that calves on the ground were essential here. I also note that bachelor facilities are really going to be important for the African population in the US.
I wonder if any of the Mabu bull calves would be valuable exports to Europe?
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Only time will tell if the US and Europe will establish cross-continent transfers for their African Populations like what has been happening with Asians. Anyone feel free to correct me, but I'm pretty sure the last European import was Osh, and we all know how that turned out from a breeding standpoint. Logistically, "trading" a few of our young bulls would be a perfect scenario, but I'm not counting on it when we seem to hardly move around the bulls we already HAVE in the region.
 
Frankie_number_1_fan said:
Only time will tell if the US and Europe will establish cross-continent transfers for their African Populations like what has been happening with Asians. Anyone feel free to correct me, but I'm pretty sure the last European import was Osh, and we all know how that turned out from a breeding standpoint. Logistically, "trading" a few of our young bulls would be a perfect scenario, but I'm not counting on it when we seem to hardly move around the bulls we already HAVE in the region.
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The most recent African Elephant import was 1.0 Thabo Umasai from Zoo Dresden to the Pittsburgh Zoo in 2011 but he ended up passing away in 2017 due to an autoimmune disease.
 
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