Rare Baby Elephant Twins Born In Kenya

An elephant in Kenya has given birth to twins, an extremely rare event, conservationists said Thursday

Nairobi, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 20th Jan, 2022 ) :An elephant in Kenya has given birth to twins, an extremely rare event, conservationists said Thursday.

Conservation group Save the Elephants said the twins -- one male and one female -- were born to a mother named Bora.

They were first spotted by lucky tourist guides on a safari drive at the weekend in Samburu reserve in northern Kenya.

Videos show the days-old newborns getting accustomed to their savannah surroundings with their doting mother and an older sibling, Bora's first calf, born in 2017.

African elephants have the largest gestation period of any living mammal, carrying their young for nearly 22 months, and gives birth roughly every four years.

"Twins are rarely encountered in elephant populations and form about only one percent of births," Save the Elephants' founder Iain Douglas-Hamilton said in a statement.

However, elephant twins do not often fare so well. The last pair of twins born in Samburu, in 2006, failed to survive more than a few days.

"Quite often the mothers don't have enough milk to support two calves," Douglas-Hamilton said.