Elephant paternity mix-up at zoo
Published:
4:59 PM January 28, 2009
Updated:
2:25 PM October 11, 2020
It turned out to be a case of “Who's the (big) daddy?”
Roddy Ashworth
It turned out to be a case of “Who's the (big) daddy?”
Because today it emerged that an elephant credited with siring a yet-to-be-born calf had nothing to do with the pregnancy.
Yesterday Colchester Zoo announced that Opal, a cow elephant at the Stanway attraction, had become pregnant thanks to its bull elephant Tembo.
Tembo, who has been at the zoo with Opal for 10 years, is already a father of four - Kito, Jambo, Abu and Thabo-Umasi.
But it transpires that when Opal was artificially inseminated recently, it was not Tembo who was the donor.
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Instead, the father will be a bull elephant called Jack, who lives in the West Midlands.
The zoo issued a correction this morning.