Baby Elephant at the Saint Louis Zoo
By Suzanne Vanderhoef
On November 23rd, the Saint Louis Zoo welcomed a new elephant to its herd: baby Jet. Adding to the excitement is that fact that Jet is the first elephant born at the zoo via artificial insemination.
“The process for artificial insemination highlights our collaboration among zoos across the country,” explains Saint Louis Zoo Keeper Katie Sipra. “We partnered with the Denver Zoo Conservation Alliance. “We let them know when we were expecting Jade to be ready and that morning they collected a sample from Jake, got it on a plane, got it to us, and that very afternoon we did a procedure with Jade that she was fully participatory in, and the rest is history.”
In addition to Jet’s father in Denver, Jet’s lineage goes back four generations in St. Louis, from his great-grandmother Pearl to her son Raja and then Raja’s daughter Jade, who is Jet’s mother.
Having the multi-generation herd together is considered best for the elephants’ welfare, in order for them to have as natural a life as possible, since that’s that they do in the wild. However, for now, the zoo is introducing Jet to the rest of the herd slowly.
“We have Jet with mom and his Auntie Sri,” says Sipra. “He loves them both dearly and kind of splits his time pretty equally between them though Sri is not actually related, she is just a favored elephant in the herd.”
And Jet’s birth is not only a big deal to the Saint Louis Zoo, but also to other zoos across the country and the world.
“With less than 50,000 Asian elephants left in the wild, they need our help,” says Tori Mattingly, another Keeper at the Saint Louis Zoo. “We’re at the point where we do need to step in if we want to have a future with elephants.”
To that end, back in 2019, our St. Louis Zoo expanded its elephant conservation efforts to create the Wild Care Institute Center for Asian elephant conservation.
“Laos was once the land of a million elephants, there are only 800 left in the country and about half of those elephants live in human care, says Mattingly. “So the odds of seeing a wild elephant in Laos is incredibly low. One of our conservation partners over in Laos actually has a really exciting project where they were able to work on potentially rewilding four individuals that were taken in from a different situation and reintroduce them to a protected area where they can still monitor and make sure they’re okay. “
In the meantime, with a 22-month gestation period, there aren’t many elephants born very often, so Jet’s arrival is incredibly important to the population, both in human care and in the wild.
