2025.0711.0003...

This piqued my curiosity so I did a little digging...

Carol Buckley* recounts a case where two elephants, Shirley (~53) and Jenny (~30), were reunited at the Elephant Sanctuary after 23 years apart. The exuberant greeting the two elephants exhibited when they were reunited was the first indication that they had known one another before. Then Shirley began to display unusual mothering behavior: Whenever Jenny lay down Shirley would straddle her in a protective manner, shading her body from the sun and from harm, as if she were a calf. For the rest of Jenny's life, their relationship was like one of mother-daughter.

Carol learned that Jenny and Shirley had last been together in a circus when Jenny was a calf and Shirley was about 30 years old. Their relationship at the Elephant Sanctuary indi­cated that they clearly remembered one another and the special adult-calf relationship they had once shared.

*Carol Buckley is an American elephant caregiver, specializing in the trauma recovery and on-going physical care of captive elephants. In 1995, Buckley realized a decades long dream and retired her elephant, Tarra, to their private farm in Hohenwald, Tennessee, which later became The Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee.

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