Elephant's delivery like a lottery win for owner

Thiruvananthapuram: An elephant owner in Kerala is overjoyed, because the animal is getting ready for delivery and he hopes to rake in big money.

Guruji, who lives on the outskirts of the state capital, owns five elephants.

One of them, Sethulekshmi, is due in March.

Discovery Channel has already approached Guruji with an offer of Rs300,000 (Dh24,090) to allow their camera crew to shoot the entire delivery.

Close on the heels are a few Ayurveda drug companies who want to take possession of the baby elephant's meconium (the first elephant dung).

Jacon Cheeran, a noted elephant expert, is not surprised at these offers.

Reports indicate that Sethulekshmi conceived after coming into contact with a wild elephant near the Achenkovil area in the Kerala-Tamil Nadu border where she had been taken to carry wood from the forests. Cheeran said tame elephants often mate with wild elephants because most owners are not in favour of their elephants mating.

"This is on account of the huge delivery expenditure involved. The duration of the pregnancy of an elephant is 20-21 months and costs hundreds of thousands of rupees."

But commercialisation of elephant delivery could lead to problems like calf rejection, holding back the delivery and also the refusal of the mother to suckle the newborn, Cheeran said.