No, it's not Dumbo this time. A few weeks ago at Animal Kingdom, a baby elephant was born. Back when the first baby elephant was born at AK, they kept it in it's "backstage home" for several months. Since this is the sixth baby elephant born to the herd, they were able to introduce him to the other elephants much sooner. We were so excited to get to see him when we were at Animal Kingdom last Saturday because he was only about two weeks old and he had just been "released" onto the savanna that week. His name is "Jabali" which means "strong as a rock" in the Swahili language.
This is a cropped/zoomed picture of one we got on our camera. He was a bit hard to see as he was right up under his mom and older sister.
His older sister is quite protective of him - about as much as the mother herself.
I copied these two pictures (the one right above and right below) from the Disney Parks blog since obviously they have better pictures. These show just how tiny he is comparatively though he will eventually grow to be more than 10,000 pounds.
This is his big sister, Kianga and his mom, Vasha (I'm guessing also African names). The most recent blog posting about him said that he's making friends with one of the other "baby" elephants that just turned a year old. She's also small but not like this one. This is a small "blip" that I copied from the blog because I thought it was interesting and cute:
"Members of our elephant team report that, at first, when Jabali approached Luna, she would run away, probably not sure what to make of the new kid on the block. Then, once she became more comfortable, she would try to wake him up when he took a nap – until big sister Kianga put a stop to that. Now, the team reports Jabali and Luna are hanging out together."
So there you have it - me and Kaelyn's newest online fascination.
