Scrubs, Stethoscopes, and Scalpels- The Life of a Vet Student: Kanjoro's Graduation

A couple of months ago I decided to foster two elephant orphans in Kenya, Kanjoro and Quanza. Recently Kanjoro has graduated to the next stage in his rehabilitation into the wild by moving to Ithumba. Ithumba is the next step in the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust's rehabilitation program, where elephants gain exposure to the wild herds in Tsavo National Park.

This is an important step in the reintegration, as baby elephants learn bush etiquette from the matriarch and older females in the herd, or in the case of bulls like Kanjoro, from older bulls in the bachelor herds. Ithumba gives the orphans a chance to interact with all of the ex-orphans and their wild friends, who frequently turn up when new orphans arrive at Ithumba, and this interaction provides the orphans with their bush etiquette training. It is also important that they make friends within the wild herds, as elephants are very social creatures.

While this is a great step in the right direction, it will still be several years before Kanjoro is no longer dependent on his keepers and his milk feedings. Elephants mature at the same rate as humans, so at almost three years old he is much older than the other nursery orphans but very much still a baby. But he is reaching that age where he was beginning to test his strength against other bulls, and so he needed to be moved to Ithumba to be with other orphans closer to his own size.

There is an update on Kanjoro's relocation on the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust's website, here Kanjoro's Relocation. Apparently Kanjoro is a nervous traveler and tried to make a break for it when he first arrived at Ithumba, before stopping and returning to the familiar keepers. He will settle in soon, as moving to Ithumba always reunites the orphans with all of their old friends who made the move before them, and an elephant's memory is longer than ours and they can remember other elephants they haven't seen for years or even decades. And then they tend to greet each other with loud rumblings and trunk kisses.

I am happy that Kanjoro is doing so well and was able to move on to this next stage of his life without mishap. Soon he will begin testing his strength against the other bulls at Ithumba that are similar in size to him, and within a couple of years he should be able to fully integrate back into the wild.