3 years ago
A pair of baby elephants, estimated to be three to four weeks old, were spotted feeding from the same mother in a Sri Lankan national park, with officials speculating Wednesday the two could be a rare set of twins.
They were spotted in the Minneriya sanctuary about 200 kilometres (125 miles) north-east of Colombo, grazing with a herd of about a dozen elephants.
Department of Wildlife Conservation Director-General Tharaka Prasad said that they had watched the pair from a distance and were confident that the two tuskers were twins.
Rangers were carrying out DNA tests on the herd's dung to confirm, Prasad said. If the results matched, it would mark the first time wildlife officials on the Indian Ocean island had sighted twins alongside their mother, he added.
The sighting was near the area where seven elephants died from poisoning in September, in an act blamed on local farmers. Nearly 200 elephants are killed every year on the island, many by farmers after the tuskers stray onto their land.
Elephants kill an average of 50 people annually, mostly when they stray into villages near their habitat.
It is good news for Sri Lanka which has seen a sharp decline in elephant population, to just over 7,000 according to the latest census, down from an estimated 12,000 in the early 1900s.
