Two twin elephants born in June with different sexesan unusual phenomenon among these animals, have been ‘baptized’ this Friday as Plai and Phang in a ceremony at the pachyderm center where they live in the central region of Thailand.
The Royal Kraal Elephant Park in the historic province of Ayutthaya has presented the elephants with the names granted by the Royal House in a ceremony in which the pachyderms and those in charge of the park dressed in yellow, the color of the royal family.
The male calf has been named Plai Sappalak Sophon, which in Thai means ‘Plai the beautiful‘, and his sister has received the name of Phang Sakon Laksophit, which means ‘Phang the beautiful’.
The twins were born on June 7, with 18 minutes differenceand its parents are a 36-year-old elephant named Chamchuri and a 29-year-old male known as Siam.
According to the NGO Save the Elephants, it is It is unusual for elephants to have twins and even less common for them to be of different sexes.with the risk that the mother will not have enough milk for both.
At first, Chamchuri rejected the female calf, but later accepted it with the help of their caregivers in the center of Ayutthaya, located about 80 kilometers north of Bangkok.
More than 3,400 elephants in Thailand
Thailand’s Department of National Parks estimates that More than 3,400 wild elephants live in Thailand’s sanctuaries, national parks and nature reserves.a population that is increasing, although still far below the 300,000 pachyderms that populated the country more than a century ago.
It is also estimated a similar population of domestic elephants in the Asian countrymost of them used in shows intended for tourists. In the past, thousands of elephants were used in the logging industry, but when logging was banned in 1989, the pachyderms began to be exhibited in the streets to beg for alms and in circus performance centers.
Elephant events are legal, but authorities are trying to end the use of pachyderms to ask for alms.
