A video of a female elephant playing with its two calves is going viral on social media. It's an extremely rare occurrence for an elephant to give birth to twins and the internet is enjoying it.
The video shows the two baby elephants playing with their mother and learning how to walk.
It was tweeted with the caption: “An elephant at Bandipur National Park, India gave birth to twin calves. An event said to be extremely rare”.
The female elephant gave birth to the calves at Bandipur Tiger Reserve in Karnataka earlier this week, according to local forest department officials.
The officials further said that some tourists came across a herd of elephants including one pregnant female in labour, struggling to give birth. The elephant, unable to stand any longer, stepped into a nearby water body. Soon, the mother elephant was found coming out of the pond with two calves.
The moment was captured by tourists and locals on their mobile phones.
According to the Society for the Protection of Animals Abroad, elephants have a one-in-a-million chance of bearing twins, with the majority of twin births happening in wild African elephants. In their lifespan, they can have four to five offspring. They can be identical, non-identical, of different genders, or the same gender.
In September last year, Sri Lanka's main elephant orphanage recorded a rare twin birth as a 25-year-old named Surangi delivered healthy male calves.
They were the first elephant twins born in captivity in Sri Lanka since 1941, elephant expert Jayantha Jayewardene told news agency AFP.
