by S Venkat Narayan
Animal lovers in the Czech Republic are rejoicing these days: Janita, a Sri Lankan elephant cow, is expecting her first baby in the Prague Zoo! It will be the second time that an elephant calf will be born in the world’s seventh best zoo since it came into existence in 1933. Donna from Vietnam delivered the zoo’s first calf—-a female—-in February 2013.
Breaking the news of the pregnancy to The Island here a few days ago, Prague Zoo’s excited Director Miroslav Bobek said: “I am delighted to disclose Janita’s pregnancy for the first time to a newspaper from Sri Lanka—-her country!”
Eleven-year-old Janita was mated a little over six months ago. After exhaustive and detailed tests of her blood and hormones, it was only recently confirmed that she is pregnant. Her calf is expected to arrive in the summer of 2016 after 22 months of pregnancy—-the longest period of gestation for a mammal on earth.
Tamara, the 10-year-old second Sri Lankan elephant cow, is now being mated, and Bobek expects to confirm her pregnancy by August.
Janita and Tamara are gifts from Sri Lankan for the people of the Czech Republic. They are from Pinnawala in Kegalle, and were transported to the Colombo airport in specially-made crates weighing a ton. Each female had weighed a ton and a half in October 2012, when a Sri Lankan Air Force Hercules cargo plane carried them from Colombo to Prague with two stopovers in Sharjah (UAE) and Ankara (Turkey).
The 7,800km-long journey took 23 hours. The aircraft brought back two Komodi dragons, two Przewalski horses and two hippos as return gifts from the Czech to the Sri Lankan people. They are being kept in the Dehiwala Zoo.
The history of elephants in Europe dates back to the ice ages, when mammoths (various species of prehistoric elephant) roamed the northern parts of the Earth, from Europe to North America. They became extinct in Europe after the Roman Empire. As exotic and expensive animals, they were exchanged as presents between European rulers, who exhibited them as luxury pets, beginning with Harun ar-Rashid’s gift of an elephant to Charlemagne.
Europeans first came in contact with live elephants in 327 BC, when Alexander the Great descended into India from the Hindu Kush. He was quick to adopt them. Four elephants guarded his tent, and shortly after his death, his associate Ptolemy issued coins showing Alexander in the elephant headdress that became a royal emblem also in the Hellenized East.
Aristotle depended on first-hand information for his account of elephants. Like most Westerners of his time, he believed that elephants live for two hundred years! The average life span of an elephant is 60 years.
The gifting of Sri Lankan elephants to Europe has a fascinating history of over four centuries and a half! The first elephant sent from the island to Europe was in the 1550s. It was a calf presented to the Habsburg Archduke Maximilian II (later King of Bohemia, King of Hungary, and Holy Roman Emperor) by King John III of Portugal and his wife, Catherine of Austria, Habsburg princess and youngest sister of the Emperor Charles V.
That young elephant bull was born in captivity in the royal stables of the Tamil Hindu Bhuvanekabahu VII of Kotte (1521-1551), King of Kotte (Ceylon). The elephant travelled as a small baby to Lisbon with the entourage of the Kotte Ambassador Sri Ramaraska Pandita, sent to Portugal on a special diplomatic mission in 1542.
The mission is seen as a duplication of the Tamil embassy to Europe from Kudiramalai to the Roman emperor Claudius. The baby elephant was named Suleiman after the Ottoman Emperor Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent. He was seen as both a diplomatic and auspicious gift for the Portuguese monarchs, John III and Catherine.
Before Suleiman was presented to Maximilian II, he was intended as a wedding present for John III’s grandson, Don Carlos, Prince of Asturias (1545-1568), eldest son of Philip II of Spain.
Suleiman was transported from the then Portuguese colonies Kotte in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and Goa in India to Lisbon via the Cape of Good Hope, and then to Valladolid, then the capital of Spain. Accompanied by Maximilian, his wife and their two children, and their attendants, Suleiman was shipped from Barcelona (Spain) to Genoa (Italy).
The royal family and Suleiman survived a risky sea trip from Portugal, including an aborted robbery by a French fleet. They arrived at the port of Genoa on 12 November 1551, and then travelled overland via Milan, Cremona and Mantua.
The entourage with its exotic accompaniment averaged 30 km to 40 km a day in the difficult terrain of the Austrian and Italian Alps. The elephant travelled by foot with a Portuguese retinue from Lisbon, arriving in Aranda de Duero (Valladolid, Spain) before November 6, 1549.
When Suleiman’s care and maintenance proved too expensive and complicated, he was adopted by Maximilian II, who was recently married to Philip II’s sister, Maria of Austria, in 1548. Maximilian and Maria acted as Regents of Spain from 1548 to 1551, in the absence of Emperor Charles V and Philip II, who was on an extended visit of the Netherlands (1549-1551).
Suleiman reached Trent, where the Council of Trent had just finished meeting, on 13 December. He crossed over the Brenner pass to enter Austria, where he was transported along the River Inn and Danube to Vienna. He reached Innsbruck on 6 January for the feast of the Epiphany, and Wasserburg on 24 January 1552.
The procession entered Vienna on 6 March 1552. A wave of “elephant enthusiasms” followed, and Suleiman was a popular subject for artists and poets. Suleiman was installed in the menagerie at Schloß Kaiser-Ebersdorf, but died only 18 months later, in December 1553. Incessant journeying that went on 18 months, insufficient nourishment and the weather had their impact on Suleiman.
In 1554, Maximilian immortalised Suleiman’s memory through a commemorative medal. The elephant is the subject of scores of books and even a 78-minute documentary by a Swiss filmmaker Karl Saurer.
Parts of Suleiman’s carcass were distributed around the Holy Roman Empire. His front right foot and part of a shoulderblade were given to the mayor of Vienna, Sebastian Huetstocker; the bones were fashioned into a chair that currently resides at the Kremsmünster Abbey. The elephant’s skin was stuffed and exhibited in Kaiserebersdorf until Maximillian, as Emperor, presented it as a gift to Albert V, Duke of Bavaria, in 1572. The stuffed pachyderm survived for centuries in the Wittlesbach royal collections and Kunstkammer in the Munich Residenz.
After standing more than 100 years in the Bavarian National Museum in Munich, the stuffed Suleiman was transferred to the Bavarian National Museum in 1928. Stored in a cellar, the historic stuffed pachyderm survived World War II bombing raids on Munich in 1943, only to be sold after the war for shoe leather. Because of dampness in storage, his skin had mildewed.
In recent times, the first elephant came to the Prague Zoo in 1933, two years after its gates were opened to the public. It was a 15-month-old male called Baby and came from the then Ceylon. He was acquired through a German animal dealer, Carl Hagenbeck, whose brother had lived in Dehiwala. Since then, there have been 22 elephants in the Prague Zoo. Some of them have been moved to other Zoos in Europe.
In the 16th century, it took Suleiman 18 months to reach his destination in Europe. In 1971, when then Sri Lankan Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike gifted Sundari and Kadira, both female, to Czechoslovakia, it took them 41 days to reach Prague from Colombo.
Forty-one years later, Janita and Tamara made it in just 23 hours! Janita and Tamara now live a luxurious life in the Elephant Valley, a specially built enclosure for elephants, in the Prague Zoo.
Built three years ago at a cost of 19.6 million Euros (SLR 2,920 million), they live the stables designed for 10 elephants, located inside of a building of 1,400 square metres and the enclosures of another 8,500 sq m.
Keeping them company in these sprawling stables are six other elephants: Gulab and Shanti from India, Donna from Vietnam and her two daughters, and Mekong, a bull from Myanmar. When Janita and Tamara become mothers, the Prague Zoo’s population will become 10.
Courtesy:The Island