The moment a baby elephant is born in the wild and starts to take its first steps has been caught on film. The video shows a herd of elephants crowding on a road in Kruger National Park, South Africa, before a tiny pachyderm emerges looking a little unstable on its feet.
The footage was captured by Fabrice Invernizzi, who was visiting Kruger National Park with his girlfriend, Angélique Piccinelli.
"It was about 5 p.m. when a herd of elephants blocked the trail, Invernizzi told Newsweek. "We stopped to observe them, they seemed a bit nervous. At first we thought there was an injured elephant. We stayed for a while to observe them, back enough not to disturb them. After a while, the mother brought her baby back to the track, and that's when we realized it was a birth. You could see blood on his hind leg.
The footage shows the baby elephant being cared for by other members of the herd, helping it as it stumbles and picking it up after it falls on its side.
"We were amazed to see all the attention that the adults gave to the little one, but what was very amazing was when the mother recovered the placenta and flogged herself with it. I'm not sure, but it seems that she gave the baby a piece of placenta," Invernizzi said.
As the elephant gets more stable, the mother helps it with her trunk and leg, encouraging it to walk on its own.
Invernizzi said Piccinelli had the shivers and he had to stop filming at one point to shed a tear: "We had never seen such a spectacle of nature," he said.
The tour group had to leave the herd of elephants before the gates to Kruger closed at 6.30 p.m.
The population of elephants in Kruger National Park has increased significantly over the last 20 years, since culling measures were stopped in the mid-1990s. Research published earlier this year said there were just 10 elephants in the park at the start of the 20th century, growing to a population of over 17,000 by 2015.
As the world's largest land mammal, elephants can grow over 10 feet tall and weigh seven tonnes. They reach sexual maturity at around 15 years and their gestation period is around 22 months. Calves can normally walk within a couple of hours of being born and after two days it is able to join the herd. They feed exclusively from their mothers for the first six months, before starting to try grasses and leaves. They will continue to nurse for two to three years, until they are fully weaned.
