DENVER — An elephant at the Denver Zoo is expecting his very first calf, but he's never even met the expecting mother — she's miles away, living out of state in Missouri's Saint Louis Zoo.
With the help of artificial insemination, Jade, a 17-year-old Asian elephant, is 10 months pregnant. Denver took samples from its 14-year-old Asian elephant, Jake, and flew them out to St. Louis.
"We worked closely with St. Louis to think about the timing, because they were they were tracking Jade and so we were ready to go, and we had Jake trained and ready to go," said Brian Aucone, the zoo's senior vice president for life sciences.
Jake and Jade's baby, both of the elephants' first offspring, is due in late 2024 or early 2025, the Denver Zoo said.
Jake has something in common with his baby-to-be — he was the first elephant born via artificial insemination at Ontario's African Lion Safari in 2009, the zoo said.
He moved to Colorado in 2018, the zoo said, joining Denver's "bachelor herd."
Denver's zoo is home to male elephants only: Groucho, Bodhi, Billy, Chuck, Jake and Duncan — all the members of the zoo's Toyota Elephant Passage, the zoo said. Although they're all bull elephants, the zoo said their genes are critical to the conservation of the endangered Asian elephant species.
The zoo said its research and care of these males is a crucial part of The Association of Zoos and Aquarium's Asian Elephant Survival Plan.
"So we have six male elephants, and in order to continue to have them contribute to the genetic sustainability of the Asian elephant population here in AZA zoos, we collect sperm on a number of the bulls that we have here," Aucone said.
Aucone said AZA zoos track their elephants' genetics to make recommendations about which males and females should breed — that's how Jack and Jade's story started.
"There's not very many zoos that can meet the standards of AZA," Aucone said. "And so, we're one of about 238 zoos in the United States and some around the world as well that meet those criteria."
The Denver Zoo is one of the first accredited institutions by the association to socialize Asian bull elephants, the zoo said.
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