On Monday, April 14, a strong earthquake touched California in the United States. The epicenter of this 5.2 magnitude earthquake is located near Julian. It is a small town located about a hundred kilometers from San Diego.
The earthquake sparked the instinct for the protection of zoo elephants
No injured animal or material damage has been reported. However, surveillance cameras have captured the amazing reaction of zoo elephants. These unusual images go around social networks.
Adult elephants rushed to form a protective circle around their young while the earthquake was shaking southern California. It is an instinctive behavior that elephants reproduce to protect elephants, whatever the danger that arises.
The images filmed by the surveillance camera are rather moving. We can clearly see the three adult elephants, Ndlula, Umngani and Khosi, head for the two 7 -year -old elephants named Zuli and Mkhaya.
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A social organization around the matriarch
“Elephants have the unique capacity to perceive sounds through their legs and have formed what is called an” alert circle “during the 5.2 magnitude earthquake which rocked southern California this morning,” said the San Diego zoo in a Facebook post.
They are African savannah elephants (Loxodonta Africana). In the wild, these elephants live in very united social groups. They have a very precise hierarchy. The elephants are thus organized around a matriarch.
With their imposing size, African elephants have few natural predators. The herd can still face dangers. As Maryland Zoo explains to Baltimore, lions, hyenas and crocodiles sometimes try to attack elephants.
The elephants react to the earthquake as if it were a predator
They mainly target young, sick and older elephants in the herd. The matriarch is responsible for detecting dangers. As soon as she detects a predator, she brings together the little ones and the most fragile.
The adults then position themselves in a circle. They turn outwards to deal with the predators. We can clearly see this behavior in the video shared by the San Diego zoo.
The elephants immediately identified the earthquake as a potential predator. Once they form a circle, the elephants “freeze somehow to collect information on the location of the danger”, specifies Mindy Albright, curse conservative at the San Diego Safari Zoo.
Elephants show strong cohesion between them
As you can see on the images, the young Mkhaya female remained in the center of the circle. The zuli male remained on the edge of the circle, however. According to Mindy Albright, the young male wanted to show his courage and independence to adults.
As for the adult female Khosi, she tapped Zuli's back and face several times with her trunk. Mindy Albright thinks she wanted to reassure the elephant and tell her to stay well in the circle.
Khosi is one of the oldest in the herd. She even helped up Zuli when he was younger. Once the earthquake trees were finished, the elephants quickly resumed their normal daily activities.
The representatives of the San Diego Zoo still noticed that the elephants remained near each other, as if they wanted to be ready to react in the event of a new danger.
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