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Pinnawela
- Elephant haven A brief
history From the Dehiwala
Zoo it was shifted in 1975 to Pinnawela. At the time it was shifted,
the orphanage had five baby elephants which formed its nucleus.
It was hoped that this facility would attract both local and foreign
visitors, the income from which would help to maintain the orphanage. In 1978 the
Pinnawela Elephant Orphanage was taken over by the National Zoological
Gardens and a captive breeding program was launched in 1982. There
were five mahouts for the twelve elephants when the orphanage was
taken over in 1978 and now there are twenty mahouts. This number
is inadequate to manage the increasing and growing number of elephants. Daily activities The babies
are fed on milk in the mornings and allowed to range freely on the
12 acres large grassland. Between 4.30 and 6.00 in the evening the
animals are taken to their stalls and tethered for the night They
are then given their evening feed which is milk again for the babies
and leaves for the older ones. The leaves are mainly Coconut leaves
(Cocos nucifera), but also branches from Jak (Artocarpus integra),
leaves, branches and logs of the Kitul palm (Caryoty urens). The elephants
are stall fed. There is very little edible material that they can
gather from the premises of the orphanage except for grass. Large
quantities of food are brought in daily. Jak, coconut, kitul, tamarind
and grass form the bulk of the food given to the elephants at Pinnawela.
Each animal gets approximately 76kg of green matter a day and in
addition each gets 2kg of a food mixture containing maize, rice
bran, powdered gingelly seed and minerals. They have access to water
twice a day from the river Maha Oya that runs by the Orphanage. There is one
female named Sama which was brought in from the northern part of
the country with the lower part of her front foot blown off by a
land mine. She copes with the leg which is about six inches shorter
than the other three. Breeding
history The father
of the first three calves born at Pinnawela was Vijaya. It was not
possible to determine the father of the next calves since many males
used to mate with the females in oestrus. Now through DNA fingerprinting
the fathers of three have been identified. Vijaya and Kumari have
produced three calves at intervals of five and four years. The first birth
at Pinnawela was in 1984, a female, to Vijaya and Kumari who were
aged 21 and 20 years respectively at the time of the birth. In 1993
Vijaya and Kumari were 30 and 29 years respectively. There are other
records of the birth of elephants in captivity in Sri Lanka but
most of these are of females that had been captured after they had
conceived in the wild. There are also records of tamed elephants
having mated with other tamed elephants and giving birth. These
are however few and far between. Research Laugh Zone Chewing gum A Canadian is having his 'petit dejeuner' (coffee, croissants, bread, butter & jam) when an American man, chewing gum, sits down next to him. The Canadian ignores the American who, nevertheless, starts a conversation. American: "You Canada folk eat the whole bread?" Canadian (in a bad mood): "Of course." American: (after blowing a huge bubble) "We don't. In the States, we only eat what's inside. The crusts we collect in a container, recycle it, transform them into croissants and sell them to Canada." The American has a smirk on his face. The Canadian listens in silence. The American persists: "D'ya eat jelly with the bread?" Canadian: "Of course." American: (cracking his gum between his teeth and chuckling). "We don't. In the States we eat fresh fruit for breakfast, then we put all the peels, seeds, and left overs in containers, recycle them, transform them into jam and sell the jam to Canada." The Canadian then asks: "Do you have sex in America?" American: "Why of course we do", the American says with a big smirk. Canadian: "And what do you do with the condoms once you've used them?" American: "We throw them away, of course." Canadian: "We don't. In Canada, we put them in a container, recycle them, melt them down into chewing gum and sell them to America." The kidnapping Telephone
conversation |
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Copyright © 2001 Wijeya Newspapers
Ltd. All rights reserved. |
on
a twenty five acre coconut property on the Maha Oya river at Rambukkana.
The orphanage was primarily designed to afford care and protection
to the many baby elephants found in the jungle without their mothers.
In most of these cases the mother had either died or been killed.
Initially this orphanage was at the Wilpattu National Park, then
shifted to the tourist complex at Bentota and then to the Dehiwala
Zoo.
