A cute elephant calf was born on November 8 in Zoo Budapest. The mother is Angele, who entered the zoo in 2010 and the father is Assam, who has been living with us since 2009. They had their first baby girl, Asha in 2013, and now they have a baby boy. Asha was present at the birth of her brother, because the caregivers considered to be useful if they didn’t separate the young elephant. As Asha is a girl, it would be important knowledge to her if she knows how a newborn should be cared for.

The Zoo has posted a video about the calving on Facebook, which shows very well the specific behavior of elephants. The mother tries to motivate the baby to stand up as soon as possible, which in our case has been so successful that the calf stood up 40 minutes after the birth. We can see these first steps on the video, and also that his sister followed the events with great interest.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzpG460ljlw

The caretakers have found the baby’s name by now. Five options were in the hat: Amar, Ambar, Arun, Arjuna, Ashok, and at the end Arun won on the public vote. Arun is a Sanskrit word that means the driver of sun chariot in mythology. Fun fact: Arun is not the first elephant under this name in Budapest: we had an elephant named Arun who lived in the 1970s and 80s.