After being found in China’s Yunnan province, an in.fected belly button was tr.eated on an a.ban.doned 6-day-old baby elephant that had been rescued from the jungle.
The young male elephant was discovered on Sunday in Xishuangbanna, China, after having been discarded by its herd.
In June, another elephant separated from its group in Yunnan province after the herd traveled hundreds of miles from their nature reserve, near China’s border with Myanmar, in a widely-reported journey going viral online.
Speaking of the baby elephant found on Sunday, one of the rescuers told CCTV: ‘When we arrived at the scene, we found that its belly button was a bit inflamed.’
Bao Mingwei, Director of the Asia Elephant Breeding and Rescue Center, added: ‘We used anti-inflammatory drugs to treat infections around the belly button.
He added: “We measured some basic data, including its body temperature and heart rate.
State television footage showed rescuers tending to the elephant before transporting the calf to the rescue center in a truck.
Footage initially showed the elephant herd grazing and drinking in a river before the video was cut to show rescuers tending to the calf.
Mingwei, along with a team of rescuers and veterinarians, was seen taking the elephant’s temperature and squeezing water into its mouth to nurse it back to health.
After some care, it got up again before being led down a train towards the truck to be taken back to the centre.
Conservation efforts in Yunnan have seen the number of China’s remaining native elephant communities double over the past decade.
Meanwhile, the space available to them has been gradually shrinking over the years, with the tropical forests of Xishuangbanna replaced by bananas, tea, or rubber plantations or used for the cultivation of raw materials for traditional Chinese medicine.
Elephants in China belong to the Asian elephant genus, one of only three currently recognized living species, the other two being the African bush elephant and the African forest elephant.
They are found across the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia, from India in the west, Nepal in the north, Sumatra in the south, and Borneo in the east.
Last month, another herd of roaming elephants in China captivated the world when they made a 17-month, 300-mile trek finally home.
During their journey, 14 Asian elephants gave birth to two cubs, caused more than £760,000 in damage, were dispersed for napping, sucked up 400 emergency personnel, about 120 vehicles, and a fleet of aircraft on their adventure.
The tree trunk swaying convoy got underway in March last year, leaving their long-standing natural habitat to pass through busy highways, city centers, and housing estates in one journey, which confused scientists.
Along the way, they raided stores, smashed doors, stole food, entered people’s homes, and even took a nap in groups in a widely shared photo taken earlier in August that scientists now believed that proved how exhausted they were.
After reaching the outskirts of Kunming, a booming metropolis filled with businessmen and tourists, they turned south again.
It is commonly known that elephants are brilliant creatures, making the unprecedented journey both mysterious and fascinating.
