An elephant has given birth to twins in the Samburu reserve in northern Kenya, an association for the protection of this endangered species announced on Thursday.
The Asociation "Save the Elephants" reported that the twins – a male and a female – were spotted last weekend by guides during a safari in this reserve located about 300 kilometers from the capital, Nairobi.
The videos show the newborns, just days old, taming their new savannah environment alongside their mother, Bora, and older brother, born in 2017.
Elephants, which give birth every four years or so, have the longest gestation length of any mammal, carrying their young in the womb for nearly 22 months.
"Twins are rarely found among elephant populations, only accounting for around 1% of births"Save the Elephants founder Iain Douglas Hamilton said in a statement.
Elephant twins don’t always survive. "Very often, mothers do not have enough milk to feed two young"explains Douglas Hamilton in a statement. "The next few days will be critical for the new twins, but we keep all our fingers crossed that they survive.", he added.
There are about 36,000 elephants in Kenya, according to figures from the first national census of all wildlife conducted in 2021.
This figure represents a 12% increase from the population recorded in 2014, when poaching fueled by ivory trafficking was highest.
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