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When the ground shook an earthquake of 5.2 magnitude, a herd of elephants in the San Diego Zoo Safari Park came into action to protect their little ones.
A video shot of their fence in the park on Monday morning shows the five African elephants standing in the morning sun before the camera trembles and they run in different directions. Then the older elephant-ndlula, umngani, khosi were broken to surround and protect the two 7-year-old calves Zuli and Mkhaya from any possible threats.
They stay shrouded for a few minutes while the older elephants look outside, they look ready, spread their ears and clap – even after the swing stopped.
The earthquake is a sense of San Diego to Los Angeles, 120 miles (193 kilometers). It sent rocks that tumbled on rural roads in San Diego County and hit items from the shelves in the small mountain village of Julian near the epicenter, but did no injuries or major damage.
But it haunted the elephants.
Once in a circle, they frozen some kind of information as they collect information about where the danger is, “says Mindy Albright, a curator of mammals in San Diego Zoo Safari Park.
Elephants are highly intelligent and social animals that have the ability to feel through their feet. If they are experiencing a threat, they regularly bounce into a ‘warning circle’, usually with the young pooled in the middle and the adults looking outside to defend the group.
In the video, one of the calves can be seen to run refuge between adults, a group of matriarchs that helped everyone raise. But the other calf, the only male, remained on the edge of the circle and wanted to show his courage and independence, Albright said. Meanwhile, the female elephant, Khosi, a teenager who helped raise him with his biological mother, Ndlula, repeatedly tapped him on the back with her trunk, and even on his face, as if he clapped him to say, “Things are ok,” and “stay back in the circle.”
Zuli is still a baby and is coded as such, Albright said, but his role will change over the next few years as he becomes a bull and moves to join a bachelor’s group, while the female elephants remain with the family unit.
“It’s so wonderful to see that they do the thing we all have to do – that any parent does it, which protects their children,” Albright said.
About an hour later, when an aftershock hit, they briefly shrouded and then spread as soon as they determined that everyone was safe.
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