Elephants at San Diego zoo huddle to protect calves during earthquake

SAN DIEGO – As the crushed shook from a 5.2-magnitude earthquake, a herd of elephants astatine the San Diego Zoo Safari Park sprung into enactment to support their young.

A video changeable of their enclosure astatine the parkland Monday greeting shows the 5 African elephants lasting astir successful the greeting prima earlier the camera shakes and they tally successful antithetic directions. Then the older elephants — Ndlula, Umngani, Khosi — scramble to encircle and shield the 2 7-year-old calves Zuli and Mkhaya from immoderate imaginable threats.

They stay huddled for respective minutes arsenic the older elephants look outward, appearing to beryllium astatine the ready, their ears dispersed and flapping — adjacent aft the rocking stopped.

The quake was felt from San Diego to Los Angeles, 120 miles (193 kilometers) away. It sent boulders tumbling onto agrarian roads successful San Diego County and knocked items disconnected store shelves successful the tiny upland municipality of Julian adjacent the epicenter but caused nary injuries oregon large damage.

But it spooked the elephants.

Once successful a circle, “they benignant of frost arsenic they stitchery accusation astir wherever the information is,” said Mindy Albright, a curator of mammals astatine the San Diego Zoo Safari Park.

Elephants are highly intelligent and societal animals that person the quality to consciousness dependable done their feet. When they comprehend a threat, they often clump unneurotic successful an “alert circle," typically with the young clustered successful the halfway and the adults facing outward to support the group.

In the video, 1 of the calves tin beryllium seen moving for refuge betwixt the adults, a radical of matriarchs that each helped rise her. But the different calf, the lone male, remained connected the borderline of the circle, wanting to amusement his courageousness and independence, Albright said. Meanwhile, the pistillate elephant, Khosi, a teen who helped rise him on with his biologic mother, Ndlula, repeatedly tapped him connected the backmost with her trunk, and adjacent connected the face, arsenic if patting him to say, “Things are OK,” and “Stay backmost successful the circle.”

Zuli is inactive a babe and is coddled arsenic such, Albright said, but his relation volition alteration implicit the adjacent fewer years arsenic helium becomes a bull and moves to articulation a bachelor radical portion the pistillate elephants enactment with the household portion for their full lives.

“It's truthful large to spot them doing the happening we each should beryllium doing — that immoderate genitor does, which is support their children,” Albright said.

About an hr aboriginal erstwhile an aftershock hit, they concisely huddled again and past dispersed erstwhile they determined everyone was safe.

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