2 elephants are pregnant at the Fresno Chaffee Zoo
FRESNO, Calif. (KSEE/KGPE) – For the first time in the Fresno Chaffee Zoo’s history two elephants are pregnant, zoo officials said.
On Thursday an ultrasound was performed on one of the elephants by the Zoo’s chief veterinarian, Dr. Audrey. The ultrasound was to look for the motion and well-being of the calf.
Dr. Audrey says that when doing an ultrasound on an elephant there’s a lot that goes into it and a lot of trust between the elephant and her keepers.
During the ultrasound, Dr. Audrey was able to find the calf’s heartbeat. She says finding the heartbeat is difficult because the baby has to be in the right position to be able to view it. It was a little flicker, that she suspected was the heartbeat.
“We’re pretty excited because every time we do an ultrasound, we don’t see a heartbeat. We don’t know what we’re going to see because the baby likes to flip and flop, left and right, further in closer to the abdomen. So it was really cool that we saw what we did,” said one of the animal curators.
According to Dr. Audrey, the calf is healthy. The elephant is approaching its final 100 days of pregnancy.
WATCH: Pregnant elephant gets ultrasound at Fresno Chaffee Zoo
An elephant has a 22-month gestational period and in those months, zoo officials say, they can say where there’s the two-month window of when the baby will be born.
Zoo officials say they are expecting the elephants to give birth around September or October.
