Taronga Zoo Sydney ( babyelephant.taronga.org.au/ ) 07 July 2009 )
We’re delighted to show you a special video of our baby’s early steps in the barn with Thong Dee. We’d love you to share this with your friends and family taronga.org.au/littlething
From Richard Reynolds
I don't think this is Australia's first elephant calf. There was one born in the 1920s or so if my memory still holds. I'd have to look through a my stuff. There may have been a question whether the female was gravid when landed "Down Under." From Richard Reynolds I looked though my files and find that an elephant was born with Wirth's circus in Sydney in 1904. This was reported to me by Fred Braid who is one of Australia's foremost circus historians. He also said there was another birth on Perry's Circus in Australia but did not give the date. However, he talked about it with Jim Perry in 1985. Perry recalled the baby elephant with its mother when he was a small boy which suggests that it was born in the first two decades of the 20th century. In 1950 an Australian zoo purchased a pregnant elephant in Singapore but she died en route to Australia. |
Tuesday, July 07, 2009
Australia's First Asian Elephant Calf!
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5 comments:
RJR,
That's what I am talking about!!!! Weren't there a number of "issues" with the elephants that arrived at Taronga Zoo?
Wade Burck
Lorrain Maynard (Perry) said that they did have an elephant born early 20s. She is now looking through piles of old documents to find some proof. Hope she finds something. The Australian Taronga Park Zoo are now advertising they are the first to have a calf born in Australia. So if anyone on here has anything at all that I can pass onto Lorraine email to me at gary@circussunrise.com.au
Thanks,
Gary Brophy
Circus Sunrise
Perry's never had a baby elephant
born with the circus my dad was Alby Perry one of the original Bros
never at any time did he say a baby elephant was born at Perry,s
i also asked my late Aunt Doris Nelson nee Perry before she passed away on oct 3rd 2008 aged
95 no baby elephant with the Perry Show Robert Perry Australia
Thong Dee, the mother, was one of eight elephants brought to Australia from Thailand in October 2006 as part of a zoo breeding program. Of those, one male and four females settled in at Taronga Zoo.
The others went to Melbourne Zoo.
Thong Dee is the first elephant to give birth in Australia, although two other female elephants at Taronga Zoo, Porntip and Pak Boon, are due to give birth in early 2010 and 2011.
The gestation period for elephants is 22 months - the longest of any mammal.
(from WA Today)
The sources I have found state that Wirths Circus had their first elephant in 1907, if this is true, its impossible with birth of an elephant in 1904, and unlikely that they had an elephant born later, which has been so unknown until today?
heres my uncomplete list of elephants:http://www.elephant.se/location2.php?location_id=1711&show=6
and the source for first elephant:
http://adbonline.anu.edu.au/biogs/A120612b.htm
" In 1907 the Wirths leased the Olympia building in Melbourne (now the site of the Victorian Arts Centre); by then, elephants had been added to the circus menagerie."
Author: Mark Valentine St Leon
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