Veterinarian’s Ingenious Plan to Help Two Little Elephants Sleep

Imagine preparing two fatigued baby elephants weighing 246 kg to turn down the lights instead of getting two sleepy youngsters ready for bed. Thankfully, a creative veterinarian found a way to improve the quality of sleep for Rupa and Aashi, two orphaned Asian elephants.

Soon after birth, the mother elephants were taken away from their young, depriving them of the warmth and love of their mother. They thus battled to get any sleep on the chilly concrete floor of a rescue facility in northeastern India. To assist the elephants sleep better, Dr. Panjit Basumatary, a veterinarian at the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) rescue facility, devised a novel idea.

Warm night socks and pajamas were given to the distressed newborn elephants to regulate their body temperature and keep them warm. As gorgeous images of them comfortably dozing next to one another demonstrate, the specially designed bedding worked wonderfully, and the nightgowns fit like a dream.

Despite initial skepticism from some of my colleagues, the elephants immediately adapted to wearing socks and boots at night, and their condition quickly improved.

To prevent young elephants from being chilly in the concrete nursery after being outside in the sun during the day, Dr. Basumatary underlined the significance of maintaining control over their body temperatures. He advised pet owners to keep their animals warm by wrapping them with blankets and scarves to keep them from freezing.

Rupa and Aashi were discovered in distinct situations; In contrast, Aashi was found in a ditch in the Assam tea garden without her mother or herd; Rupa was discovered rolling down a steep rocky slope into a ravine when she was only a few weeks old. The newborn elephants found in Kaziranga National Park seemed to have little chance of surviving, but they are doing well thanks to Dr. Basumatary and the IFAW rescue facility.

Rupa and Aashi will ultimately be weaned from bottle-fed formula milk and spend two years in groups in Kaziranga or Manas, a neighboring national park on the Bhutanese border. A newborn elephant’s first three months of care at the IFAW center cost about £50 per day, requiring new boots every two weeks.

Yet, in a location with a high concentration of Asian elephants and the world’s most significant single-horned rhino population, the problem of newborn elephants being separated from their moms is becoming worse. Poaching is also a serious issue because of the Chinese market’s need for illicit rhino horns and ivory. Also, due to the fast population increase, formerly wild regions are being developed and lost elephants sometimes wander into cities and villages.

In conclusion, the fantastic work at the IFAW rescue facility to save endangered Asian elephants is only one example of how Dr. Basumatary developed a novel method to assist Rupa and Aashi in sleeping better. Even though they could encounter several difficulties in the wild, they should nevertheless be safeguarded so they might have a chance to recuperate and flourish.

Source :animals.theinfotimes.com