Asian Elephants are becoming increasingly rare in the wild, with numbers dropping in the last century from 200,000 to less than 50,000 estimated individuals. Living in isolated groups from India and Southeast Asia to as far south as Borneo, their numbers face increasing pressure from poaching and habitat loss/ fragmentation. In the terrible but increasingly possible event that the species goes extinct in the wild, the efforts of zoos to improve captive breeding many prove vital for their continued existence. Unfortunately, Asian elephants have lower rates of longevity and much higher infant mortality than their wild brethren.

Dennis Jarvis. flickr

In Albuquerque, New Mexico the elephant staff at the city’s BioPark Zoo have been training one 25 year-old female elephant to be a mother. Rozie was the first Asian elephant to be born in the BioPark in 1993, and has been the subject of a 12 year program to teach her the skills needed to give birth and rear a calf. It seems to be working. On May 4th of this year, she triumphantly gave birth to Thorn, a healthy male. Thorn is Rozie’s 3rd calf, and the fourth to be born in Albuquerque’s zoo, one of the few facilities in the United States to successfully breed Asian elephants in captivity.

For Thorn’s birth, Rozie was attended by her mother Alice and her oldest daughter Jazmine, while Zoo staff looked on excitedly over monitors from nearby. A local social media campaign was held to choose the new calf’s name with finalists being Thorne, Solo and Ren; the two Star Wars names being in honor of the franchise-associated birthday May the 4th (be with you!). All of the parks’s 6 elephants get daily exercise, herd interaction, and enrichment as they rotate through 3 enclosures (one with a large pool), but Rozie has received special lessons from the park’s elephant team led by Elephant Manager Rhonda Saiers ever since Jazmine’s birth.

The motherhood training started in 2007, when Rozie was pregnant with Jazmine. The staff took care of the new calf and kept Rozie calm, showing her how to nurse and respond to her baby. Now Jazmine herself is learning, having been right by her mother’s side for her younger brother’s birth,. Along with Rozie and her children, the zoo’s herd also includes 19 year-old Albert, who is Jazmine’s father, and Irene, an unrelated female who zoo staff say is a good aunt. Thorne’s father Samson, who is a brother of Albert, has been moved to a zoo in Oregon to continue his fatherly activities. Rozie’s second calf, a female named Daizy, died in 2015 at five years old, of a fatal hemorrhagic disease called elephant enotheliotropic herpesvirus, or EEHV, despite medication and round-the-clock treatment. Fortunately, none of the other elephants were seriously infected, but the death provided further impetus for the staff to work for a successful birth this time around.

Elephant females don’t go through menopause, so they can continue to produce offspring throughout much of their lives, which can be between 40 and 60 years. Rozie carried each of her calves for 359 days, with her son Thorne being born on the same day as his father Samson.Thorne was average for Asian elephant calves, weighing 200 pounds and standing 3 feet tall. Although calves start on food quickly, they continue to nurse for 3-4 years, gaining a pound or two every day on it’s mother’s extremely nutritious milk. Thorne began nursing right away, but was not too fond of napping, apparently. According to zoo staff, he is growing and going furiously; too excited with life and family to pause for much-needed rest.

You can see Thorne and his herd at the ABQ BioPark Zoo