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The tragedy of the babies – was a rare twin a victim of starvation?
View(s):Chilling are the details of what happens to elephant-calves in the scenario where the herds do not have access to their annual, long-lasting feast on the grasslands of Minneriya.
When the elephant mothers do not have enough food, they will not have adequate milk for their suckling calves. Usually, calves suckle exclusively for about one year and then begin feeding on other stuff but keep suckling until the mother gives birth to another baby, says Dr. Sumith Pilapitiya, drawing similarities to human mothers, especially in the villages, who do the same.
Twins, ‘Bhagya’ and ‘Bhathiya’ with mother ‘Bernadine’. Bhagya has not been sighted since December 2020
The grim picture is that calves under two years old would be the first casualties of starvation due to a lack of mothers’ milk, who in turn, could have starved due to the grassland not being available.
Dr. Pilapitiya sighs over the ‘missing twin’ of Minneriya.
Seeing the twins every time he did his field work at Minneriya, the little one had been spotted last on December 22, 2020, just before Christmas. Twin births being rare in the wild (less than 1%) and the first six months of life being critical, ‘Bhagya’ and ‘Bhathiya’ born to ‘Bernadine’ had passed this vulnerable period.
Then what could have happened to ‘Bhagya’, wonders Dr. Pilapitiya. ‘Bernadine’ was an experienced mother, not a new mother. She had had a baby earlier and was well-versed in the art of mothering. This was while, he had also seen many ‘allomothers’ (in addition to the biological mother who was ‘Bernadine’, other females who tended the twins) around ‘Bhagya’.
Could ‘Bhagya’ have fallen into a cultivation well? Once again, it seems unlikely, he says, as there have been no such reports. Farmers would also not attack a baby. Was she abducted by humans? Unlikely, once again, because usually humans would have to tranquillize or kill the mother and then they would have been able to take both babies, he argues.
“The only credible conclusion seems to be is that ‘Bhagya’ died of starvation,” says Dr. Pilapitiya, posing the heartrending question of how many other babies may have suffered a similar fate.
No one knows, he says, adding, for “we were following ‘Bhagya’ but not the others. It is only now that they along with the Centre for Conservation and Research (CCR) are developing an identification database for the Minneriya elephants.