These Dedicated Caregivers Sleep With Orphaned Young Elephants At Night

Elephants, like many other wildlife species, are endangered. Whether due to habitat degradation or poaching, the population of these gorgeous beasts is declining from year to year. However, some people continue to go above and above to safeguard elephants from extinction. Projects like Kenya’s Sheldrick Wildlife Trust give us hope that it is not yet too late. The devoted people here have been protecting and caring for these lovely creatures for nearly half a century. These real-life heroes deserve a lot of credit for treating over 8,000 elephants and raising over 250 orphaned elephants.

These people devote a lot of love, affection, and devotion into their work. To get a better understanding of what they’re capable of in their pursuit of the animals they’re fond of, you should know that they’re even sleeping with the orphan elephant to make them feel at ease. Even though people consider them beasts, life is as tough as it can gets for an orphan animals. They, too, require someone to keep them warm, feed them, and snuggle with them, just like human newborns.

Unfortunately for these newborn elephants, their mothers had died as a result of ivory poaching, but they found so much love and devotion from the people who saved them – their caregivers. These persons, mostly men, look after the elephants as if they were their own children. However, because many of them are fathers, they are already accustomed with how to deal with a crying baby.

“It feels the same to me as having my own babies in the same room,” one keeper, a father of two, told The Dodo. “It felt like they were babies again, waking up at all hours to feed and change them. They [infant elephants] also cry out in the middle of the night, especially the young ones. They, like human newborns, are restless and frequently wake up. They sometimes cry for milk, and you have to wake up for them, exactly like a mother with a newborn baby.” Baby elephants must be fed every three hours, including at night, in order to grow healthily. But it doesn’t appear to disturb their caregivers!

“It’s as if their minds are programmed to wake up every three hours,” another keeper observed. “Every three hours, you feel a trunk reach up and pull your blankets off!” But these lovely, innocent, and sensitive creatures are constantly accompanied by these nice people, especially at night, when they make certain they are all wrapped in blankets. “It makes the babies feel very secure,” remarked a keeper. “You are like a mother to them, and your presence allows them to sleep soundly. They can grow healthily if they can sleep pleasantly.”