'Mating.
For every species on earth it's vital for the survival of the fittest.'
That's really exciting.
You can see it moving.
'But the way some creatures make babies is quite extraordinary.'
If she starts squatting then we know it's getting really close.
We've come to Africa to explore the unique reproductive challenges of the largest animal on land.
We'll find out what turns bull elephants into sex-crazed beasts.'
(Trumpeting) What a guy!
'And reveal truly impressive anatomical adaptations.'
The testicles are normally about the size of a football.
'We'll investigate why females have the longest pregnancy of any mammal.
And witness one of the most remarkable births in the animal kingdom.'
In terms of cute factor it's kind of 11 out of 10, at least.
'Sex in the Wild' is 'The African elephant.
Males roam the Savannah alone.
While females and their young live in large family groups.
Led by a wise old lady - the matriarch.
Their huge size makes them less vulnerable to attack from predators.
But when it comes to reproduction, being big creates surprising challenges.'
Yeah, I see him.
Right there.
'I'm Joy Reidenberg, a comparative anatomist.
- And together with vet Mark Evans...' - Wow.
..I want to explore the amazing ways elephants have evolved to make reproduction possible.
To get both sides of the picture, Mark is going to track down a lone male, while I stay here in the Okavango Delta in Botswana, with a group of females, in the hope of seeing a baby elephant being born.
This spectacular wilderness is created by a river that never made it to the sea.
Hidden in this maze of islands and waterways is Abu Camp where rescued elephants are being rehabilitated.
They live semi-wild and are used to human contact.
It gives me a once-in-a-lifetime chance to get close to a mother who is about to give birth.
Chris Boati, one of the elephant handlers, is going to introduce me to the expectant mother.'
So, Chris, tell me who these are.
Hello, Kiti.
Wow, you are beautiful.
'Kiti is 18.
She was rescued as a youngster, found stuck in the mud after a crocodile attack.'
Does she have any wounds from the crocodile attack?
I see it, yeah.
Oh, there's two.
Two big indentations.
And Kiti is pregnant with another calf.
Wow, you're a mom-to-be again.
How long has she been pregnant for?
21 months already.
'Elephants have the longest pregnancy of any mammal - 22 months.
'Kiti's baby is due at any moment.'
- Can we go around the side?
Can we look?
- Yeah, we can.
- Kiti, I'm going around your side, okay?
- Steady, Kit.
Oh, I see it's very bulging right here.
- You can see it moving.
- Steady, Kiti.
This is incredible, you can really feel it here.
'Kiti's impressive bump holds more than just the baby.'
So what we're looking at here is the hip bone and coming forward from here, all through here is the womb or the uterus.
And Kiti's baby is sitting in it like a cradle.
'Just like in humans, Kiti's fetus grows inside an amniotic sac filled with liquid that protects and cushions it.
But in elephants this is dwarfed by the allantoic sac, which collects urine from the embryo.
In humans it's tiny, but in elephants, after almost two years, it can hold up to eight liters of waste.
Kiti and the five other elephants in the Abu herd wander freely in the wild during the day.
But every evening they are rounded up and brought into a protected area for their own safety.
Elephants usually give birth at night and this gives us an extraordinarily rare opportunity to film the process of Kiti's labor.'
We've got the place rigged up so we can see the elephant birth even if it's dark out.
So up there on the stand is an infra-red light that only the cameras can see.
We can't see it, the elephants can't see it and that way it won't disturb anybody.
And then there's a camera way down there and another one over there.
And those two cameras are rigged to pick up just the infra-red light.
'Predicting the due date in a pregnancy as long as an elephant's is almost impossible.
But with the cameras in place, we hope to capture this rarely-seen event.
(MARK) 'Kiti mated in the wild, and the baby's father is long gone.
Male elephants leave the family herd as adolescents around 12 years old.
They roam across enormous areas; some have home ranges that extend over 13,000 square miles.
To explore how they find females to mate with, I've come to the Eastern Cape of South Africa to join game ranger, Geran Ellish.
We're on the lookout for a 30-year-old male who's in "musth" - a physiological state unique to elephants when a massive surge in testosterone turns bulls into sex-crazed beasts.'
When you go to the right there's a yellow round bush.
- Yeah.
- And then go to the right of that, there's a grey shape.
I'm amazed you can see him.
I can't...
I'm definitely looking in the wrong place.
'Bulls can live in small bachelor groups, but during musth they break away on their own.'
Go to the right, and there's his ears flapping.
I've got him now.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Finally, a bull in musth.
Some of the classic symptoms: the temporal gland secretion down the side of his face is oily, sticky.
There's a hole between his eye and ear hole which drains out of a gland that's further up on his head.
It's a scent gland.
'He's emitting a potent odor from his face that signals his status.
It's an acrid stench.'
(GERAN) It's his aftershave.
- Yeah.
That's what I always say.
Also you can also see his prepuce there is wet between his back legs and he's dribbling urine.
They may dribble 350 liters a day of urine - pungent urine, very smelly.
Leaving a trail so females know where he's been, younger males know to stay away.
He's very alert about his surroundings.
We have to be careful.
Because they can become notoriously aggressive.
(Trumpeting) 'In musth there can be up to a 60-fold increase in a bull's testosterone levels.
If a rival stands in his way, fights can be fatal.
In this super-charged state, males cover up to 50 miles a day in search of females - barely stopping to eat or drink.
Geran knows this bull well.
He's been in musth for almost five months now.'
- You can see he's tired.
- Hmm.
I think this is the tail end of his musth cycle.
He's been in it for a while and he's now dropping.
'The duration of musth is related to age and status.
The biggest, highest-ranking bulls stay in musth for longest.
Up to five months a year.
Exhausted, his musth starts to fade, giving the next in line his chance.
In turn, even the lower bulls get a few days to chase the females.
Their contribution to the population maintains a healthy genetic mix.'
There's part of me that is, to be honest, slightly nervous that we are this close.
If I wasn't with you I would be another 50 meters, or 100 meters that way.
They chase you so fast, your mind can't comprehend how fast they're going and that gets really dangerous.
(MARK) Here he comes.
Okay, time to back off.
It's alright, my friend.
It's fine.
- (Trumpets) - Yeah, yeah.
Look at you.
What a guy.
What a guy.
The cockiness, the confidence in that.
That he can just amble up two steps towards us, ears out.
It's, "You get out of here."
We back off.
He's back on the track, he's chilled.
'It's thought subtle changes in his scent tell females how long he's been in musth.
The longer he can last, the stronger and more attractive he is.'
(JOY) 'When it comes to mating, a female elephant doesn't want just any old male, but the highest-ranking bull.
She can afford to be picky.
Females can easily outrun the young pretenders.
For the males lucky enough to mount there's a major navigational challenge ahead.
Instead of being near the anus, as in most mammals including us, the opening to the vagina is in a very inaccessible and odd place.
So this is the back end of an elephant.
The anus is right over here.
And the reproductive tract is exactly where you expect it.
The ovaries are up here.
The uterus is right below it over here and then the vagina comes through this way.
But then it does something completely different and unexpected.
The elephant vagina opens into a space called the "vestibule".
In humans it's just a few millimeters across, but here it's over a meter and extends way down to an opening between her hind legs.
It's thought elephants inherited this anatomy from their ancestors.
It also reduces the drop for the newborn calf by around a meter.
For similarly large mammals, like giraffes, who give birth standing up, it's a very long fall for the newborn.
But by the time the long hind legs leave the vagina, the baby's head is almost touching the ground.
An elephant baby is shorter and heavier and would suffer serious injury if it fell that far.
Perhaps natural selection has avoided the long drop by favoring a vulva closer to the ground.'
Now the problem with this is it presents a challenge for the male, because instead of having a vulva in the back, it's way down over here.
For the male the problem with reaching around and underneath is that you'd have to do a U-shaped bend.
But the female has a solution to this.
If she's stimulated properly and she accepts, her clitoris will enlarge and as it swells it will actually push that vulva backwards.
Now the male can reach more easily when the opening is behind, but he still has quite a challenge because he's got to have a massive penis and it's got to be positioned properly to get through that obstacle course.
Hey, just remember the power lines and fences down below.
(MARK) 'Back in South Africa I'm on a mission to unravel the mysteries of the elephant's penis.'
(Chatter over radio) 'Standing by.
We're gonna come a little bit closer.'
'I've joined one of the world's leading elephant reproduction experts, Dr Imke Luders and her team, who are trying to control elephant populations.
While elephants are under threat in some places, surprisingly there are game reserves where their numbers are too high.
Imke is testing an unconventional solution - a male contraceptive.
It's the first time anyone has tested this on wild elephants.
Two years ago she injected this 33-year-old bull.
Now the team needs a semen sample from him, to find out if the birth control vaccine is working.
It's a great opportunity for me to get close to one of the most impressive reproductive organs on the planet.
But first the air-crew must anesthetize the elephant, who's running for cover into thick bush.'
Come on, big man.
Come on.
Come on.
(Low chatter) - Yeah, the dart is in.
- Okay, the dart's in.
- Where is he?
- He's down behind us.
- What's his position like?
- Not great.
We've just heard on the radio that the elephant is darted, but unfortunately it's on a slight hill up in amongst the bush.
So we're gonna have to try to get in as far as we can with the vehicles and then we'll have to leg it on foot.
'Last time South Africa tried to control elephant numbers they culled hundreds of large bulls, but it had disastrous consequences.
With no dominant males around, young males went into musth early and for long periods.
They fought with other animals and even tried to mate with male rhinos!
The team needs to move fast to gain access to the bull's penis before it retracts back into its sheath.
We get there just in time.
The tip of the penis is still out.'
Tricky working conditions now in this environment, not ideal.
Downhill on a slope.
Yeah, that's actually the worst position we ever had.
The job now is to try and get a semen sample.
It's kind of like a five-, six-man job.
Steve's put an electro ejaculator - it's a big device, looks like a huge bullet, that goes inside the rectum.
That delivers an electrical current onto the nerves in the pelvis which hopefully will stimulate an erection.
And then you'll just see how massive this penis is.
'The elephant is unconscious but breathing on his own.
This four-ton bull won't feel anything during the procedure.
A large home-made condom is placed over the head of the penis to collect any ejaculate.
- Keep it on there?
- Yeah, we keep the condom on at all times.
So when it's flaccid like this, the penis is, would normally be retracted into the prepuce out of harm's way.
At the moment it feels very rubbery, very fleshy.
There's no bone in the penis at all.
The erection is all done by filling the penis with blood under pressure.
You can pull here, it's coming.
- There we go.
- Yep!
Good.
- Yeah, that's it.
- Yeah.
'Gradually they increase the voltage.'
So, as the arteries dilate in the pelvis, then muscles contract down the veins that would normally take the blood away, so that means, this large sausage, if you like, starts getting filled with blood under pressure which can't then escape out again.
And that's what extends it toward me.
And, you can see, it's started but it's certainly not finished yet.
- You can pull a bit more.
- Yeah.
And it's a huge weight when this is filled with blood.
- This is heavy.
- Yeah, I bet.
And they reckon full, maybe even 30 kilos.
Getting a nice erection, but nothing yet, no fluid yet.
'Blood rushes in to fill the penis.'
See the vessels here?
The thing is... - Oh, there we go.
Wow!
- (Laughter) It's alive.
It's seriously alive.
And that's all done by blood pressure.
- That's not muscles that did that.
- No.
And again!
My God.
'There's no sign of ejaculation yet.
This movement is the penis' natural searching response.'
It's just this sensitive tip here and the stimulation together, make it jump.
So it's gonna induce a searching behavior, which you naturally see during mating.
Because he's got to find the opening into her vestibule.
Yes, yes.
'Without muscles to move it, sudden surges of blood pressure flex the tip of the penis repeatedly as it probes blindly for the vulva opening.'
- And there it goes!
- Hold on, baby.
It's like a bloody rodeo.
That's incredible.
That's amazing.
You're beginning to see now the full length of his penis.
Can you give us a sense of how big it is?
This is gonna be...
I'm glad you're all laughing at this.
I know you've done it before and I haven't... - You thought we were joking.
- I did think...
I genuinely thought you were having me on about how forceful this is.
- It's one meter... - One meter 40.
- But that's not even... - That's not even the whole of it.
Yeah, we have fluid coming.
'Finally, we collect some semen.
It's not a lot, maybe only six milliliters.
And that means Imke's contraceptive is working.
It's a vaccine that blocks the action of a reproductive hormone and inhibits the production of sperm.'
So in this guy before you started with vaccinations, you would have got a good healthy... Oh, we got the most beautiful ejaculate of this guy.
It was actually a shame shutting him down.
We had 200ml of pure motile awesome sperm.
'As the volume of semen has dropped, it should mean the testicles have shriveled.
Elephant testicles are inside the body, so to check their size, the team need to do an ultrasound scan.'
You going for the right first?
- Whatever we get.
- Whatever shows up first.
They're normally quite close to the kidneys on either side.
Right inside the abdomen.
It's very different to us because our testicles start off near the kidneys and then, a fibrous ligament called the gubernaculum pulls the testicle down into the scrotum.
We have them in our scrotum to be able to control their temperature, because it's cooler outside our bodies than inside.
'Having testicles deep inside the body is more typical of marine mammals.
This could be evidence that the elephant's ancestors lived in water.
In most land mammals this position would be too warm to produce viable sperm, but elephants have a low core body temperature.
They have no trouble sending healthy sperm down their two-meter-long reproductive tract.
The ultrasound probe is now as far in as it will go - almost 1.5 meters inside the elephant.'
Okay, we got the one testicle.
We just got a glimpse of it 'cause it's so deep.
You can see Steve was all the way up there.
When we started this bull he was more than 20cm in diameter.
Now, after two years of vaccinations we are down to 12cm, so it's shrunk almost by half.
'Back in the lab Imke will analyze the semen to see if any microscopic sperm cells have survived.
If it works, Imke hopes her birth control could offer a new humane way of controlling wild populations across Africa.'
(JOY) 'Male elephants have a hard enough time tracking down females and navigating their reproductive anatomy... ..but they also face another obstacle: a very narrow fertility window.'
Elephants have a different reproductive cycling compared to humans.
They come into estrus.
In other words they release an egg only once every four to four and half months.
That's very different from humans who release an egg once every month.
So for a human there's 12 opportunities in a year to fertilize the woman.
For these animals it's only going to occur about three times a year.
'And for males in musth, there's even worse news.
After their two-year pregnancies, females then spend at least another two years nursing their calf, when they have no interest in sex.'
That means they're only receptive for two to four days once every four or maybe even five years.
That is a long time to wait for that tiny little window of receptivity.
So the females can't leave it up to the males to figure this out.
They have a way to tell the males, to advertise, that they are ready for sex.
And what they do is they secrete a chemical, and that chemical is in their urine.
And the males can pick up on that chemical.
What they do is they put the trunk down, they sample a bit of the urine.
They bring it to their mouth and it's like tasting and smelling the chemical, and they can detect that the female is about to release an egg.
Because she starts to release that chemical about four weeks before the egg is actually released.
'It is thought the ovaries release this chemical signal into the blood and then the urine, steadily increasing in concentration in the final weeks leading up to ovulation.'
Only the biggest, strongest bulls, the ones with the most experience are able to tell exactly when those few precious days have arrived.'
They have that very short time to mate with her because she's just advertised.
She hasn't left it up to them to figure out.
She's told them, she's ready for sex.
'So in those rare moments when a female is in heat, the race to mate is on.
Before accepting him, she puts up a token chase.
(Trumpets) A bull doesn't need to move his hips during sex.
His penis can thrust independently.
No bad thing when most of his six-ton weight now rests on his hind legs.
Little wonder sex lasts just 30 seconds.
(Trumpets) They'll mate several times a day while the female is still fertile.
And it's far from a private encounter.
Sex is often accompanied by the herd rushing about in an agitated state trumpeting loudly.
- (Trumpeting) - This is known as the mating pandemonium.
It's the herd signaling that there is a fertile female.
If there are other males in the area that may be bigger and better, they should head this way!
(Trumpeting) With the sun setting over Botswana's Okavango Delta, I accompany Kiti as Chris leads her into the secure enclosure, called a boma, that we've rigged with cameras.'
Have you seen any signs that she's getting close?
Do you think maybe it will be tonight?
- And you're hoping for?
- A girl.
A girl.
Why is that?
Okay.
- Alright, Kit.
Move up.
- Okay, Kiti.
Move up.
Good girl.
'As darkness falls... ..our cameras reveal Kiti and the youngsters who share the boma, her daughter Lorato and a five-year-old orphan, called Paseka, that Kiti has taken under her wing.'
So things are pretty quiet right now.
But I do notice that she's leaning forward.
She's not putting much weight on her back legs, stretching out that area a little bit.
Maybe it's more comfortable for her to stretch a little bit.
Her breasts are already engorged with milk.
She's probably gonna get very uncomfortable right in the area of her hips which is right in this area here.
And she may start shifting her weight from one side to the other, alternating which foot she wants to put the pressure on.
She might even stand with her legs further apart, start bending her knees a little bit.
'As the hours pass, a tired Lorato and Paseka go to sleep.
But Kiti remains restless.'
She doesn't look like she's getting ready to go down to sleep.
If she starts squatting then we know it's getting really close.
'Eventually, Kiti nods off too.
Every few hours she wakes to eat and drink, and swat insects away.
And then grabs another nap.
When dawn breaks, the whole family stirs.
As she leaves the boma, Kiti looks heavy and slow.
She's obviously almost ready, but she will have to wait at least another night.
(MARK) 'In South Africa, Imke Luders continues to collect semen samples from a group of bull elephants, who were inoculated two years ago as part of a new approach to controlling elephant populations.'
So they're already analyzing in here?
Yeah?
Yep.
Let's see what they got.
'To see how effective her contraceptive has been in reducing sperm counts, Imke and her colleague Isle Luthers must analyze their elephant semen.'
- This is cool.
- Yeah.
- Wow.
- So this is then what he can... Now you can really see the sperm... That's amazing.
So you're tracking each individual sperm?
(BOTH) Yeah.
Imke's contraceptive works by disrupting the production of sperm and causing severe defects in those that do make it out.
That's all loose heads.
Loose head.
Loose head.
So you've essentially got a kind of DNA capsule, but with no propulsion system.
That is exactly what we have.
This is actually just a very elegant way to castrate an elephant without even doing any surgery.
'Normally, a bull can produce up to eight billion sperm per ejaculate, but that still doesn't guarantee successful fertilization.
Motility, the ability to swim, is vital in the race to reach the egg.'
Motility of elephant sperm is 80 per cent.
- So that's good.
80 per cent good sperm.
- It's brilliant!
Compared to humans, we're pretty rubbish at producing decent sperm, aren't we?
Yeah...
I say we, I mean, obviously, I will take... carry the can for this.
Good.
Yeah, anything from 15 to 40 per cent motility.
- And 40 per cent is very good for a human.
- It's good.
Humans are a lot worse in that respect.
'Having lots of highly active sperm has benefits.
Despite its size, the elephant penis is not actually long enough to reach the vagina.
Instead it must squirt semen at the vaginal opening, which astonishingly in first-time moms is no bigger than the end of a pen - just 4mm wide.
A third of the sperm failed to enter the vagina.
Once inside, the journey is far from over.
The egg is still another meter away.
Of the billions of sperm released only around 10,000 will get there.'
(JOY) 'It takes sperm around 12 hours to reach the egg.
The same journey in humans can take as little as five minutes.
After around 40 days the egg implants in the uterus.
By ten weeks the fetus has a beating heart.
A few weeks later the toe nails appear.
Soon after the feet start to kick.
The trunk begins to grow at 15 weeks.
And eyelids cover the eyes 16 weeks in.
At 24 weeks old, the ears extend over the neck.
And the fetus is now fully formed.
Over the next year and a half its brain grows and its body puts on weight.'
But why such a long time for a pregnancy?
We only need nine months and there are other animals that go longer than nine months, whales for example.
But elephants surely have the longest.
(Thunder rumbles) 'The reason is that a newborn elephant needs to be able to get up and run from the moment it's born.
Lions are the biggest killers of baby elephants.
Some calves have had to cover 15km in the first five hours of their life.'
Our babies are born pretty helpless.
They can't move on their own.
They can't even hold their heads up.
So they slowly acquire all those developmental milestones.
By the time a human baby is walking it's about a year old.
So what Kiti has done is allowed her baby to get all of that development happening while it's still in the womb.
So if you add that extra year of human development that it takes to get to that stage, to the nine months that we already have for our pregnancy now you're approaching the pregnancy length that Kiti has for her baby.
An animal that has to not only have a very developed nervous system, but also the development that allows them to get up and walk.
It's pretty amazing.
'Now, in the final days before birth, Kiti's baby weighs over 200 pounds.
She's feeling the strain, walking much slower than when I arrived.
She's spending more of her time eating, getting essential protein from plants... ..and calcium from tree bark.
As night falls in Botswana, heavily-pregnant Kiti is back in the boma.
Over the following nights I keep watch and witness the tender way they look out for each other.
Never once do I spot Kiti going to sleep before Paseka and Lorato.
She's always on her feet till both have dozed off.
And there appears to be a genuine bond between the sisters.
One, that like our children, includes plenty of play-fighting.
And eating 18 hours day comes at a price.
There's lots and lots of gas.
(Elephants break wind) (Continue breaking wind) But still...no baby.
With a pregnancy that lasts 22 months, a few days late is nothing.
14 days later than predicted, Kiti's labor finally begins.
She becomes highly agitated... ..and starts to urinate a lot.
As she turns, a bulge is visible under her tail.
The baby is coming.
The baby is past the pelvis.
Its umbilical cord has been snapped free.
Without this lifeline it won't survive inside its mother for more than 20 minutes.
Just below the tail, you can see Kiti's baby moving further down the birth canal.
Suddenly her waters break.
(Low trumpeting) Kiti scuffs dirt over her new baby.
It's what wild elephants do to mask the newborn's scent from predators.
Kiti may have learned this growing up with her maternal herd.
But Kiti's behavior is puzzling.
She's not a first-time mom, but seems unsure how to react to the newborn.
It's as if she is frightened.
This behavior's more typical of elephants born in captivity, who haven't had the benefit of seeing aunts and sisters giving birth.
Fortunately, it seems to dawn on Kiti what's happening and motherly love takes over.
She reaches down to her new baby.
In less than ten minutes the newborn is on her feet.
It's a girl.
The handlers have called her Naledi.
Mark and I can't wait to meet her.'
- There she is.
Look how cute she is.
- Look at you.
- Hello.
- Hi, Naledi.
She is absolutely wonderful.
Look how cute she is.
Her name means star 'cause she was born on a starry night.
Hi.
You're so cute.
You're so cute.
- Hello.
- Say hello to Mark.
- Yeah.
- How are you?
How are you?
You are absolutely gorgeous, aren't you?
In terms of cute factor, it's kind of 11 out of 10, at least, I would say.
Come in here.
Come here.
Just take a look at this.
Just take a look at this.
Is that nice?
Was that nice?
Taking a little drink, you try again.
This is absolutely brilliant.
I have never had the opportunity to see nursing at such close quarters.
'There's an obvious benefit to being a big baby.
Kiti's nipples are almost a meter off the ground between her front legs.
If Naledi was any shorter she wouldn't be able to reach them.'
You get that beautiful image of actually it's quite tricky drinking from mom's breasts, when you've got a massive trunk in the way.
'But Naledi has mastered the technique.
Find the teat, flop the trunk out of the way and latch on.'
A little calf like this will drink at least every hour for maybe one to two minutes, because it needs to get huge amounts of nutrition inside of it.
Its eyesight is pretty shocking when it's born, so it uses mostly the sense of smell.
And on the ends of the nipples the mom produces this waxy substance, that attracts them to the teat.
When they're sucking they're taking in relatively small volumes.
It might be five, seven liters a day, but as they get bigger, obviously the volume increases.
She's gonna put on a huge amount of weight.
By the time an elephant calf is just a year old, it could weigh half a ton.
(JOY) 'Naledi is also getting to grips with what's arguably an elephant's most important organ.'
It's so amazing to watch this baby and how well developed it is, and it's only about six, seven days old.
And it can already run, walk, and use its trunk in the most amazing way.
The trunk has so many muscles in it.
It's just fascinating to watch how it uses it to touch everything, pick things up.
It even likes to pick at the grasses and leaves.
Even though it's not eating that 'cause it's still a nursing calf.
But it's doing what Mama's doing, it's doing what its big sister is doing.
And it's just practicing, using that trunk.
'She may not have mastered it yet, but look carefully, and you can see Naledi not just trying to use her trunk but crucially responding to whatever it touches.
And that's amazing, because what it means is that her motor and sensory neurons are all fully functional within days of being born.'
And I think about how my kids where at this age, at six days old.
I was lucky if they looked up at me.
Mostly what they could do was move their eyes, maybe move their head just a tiny bit, but they had no control over their motor movements.
So most of the time their hands were poking themselves in the eyes, all kinds of uncoordinated behaviors.
They certainly couldn't sit up.
They couldn't stand.
They couldn't walk.
'Mark and I aren't the only ones vying for her attention.
The others in the herd constantly touch and caress Naledi.
Few other animals show such humanlike interest in another's newborn.
Right now, Kiti's herd are trying to usher Naledi along.
Elephants are always on the move.
And for now, little Naledi's biggest challenge is to keep up.
But she encounters new obstacles with almost every step.
A little help from Mom and she's back on track.'
(MARK) This is a really, really tricky little path for this calf.
She's sinking into the mud and she's exhausted.
She's a baby.
She's only six days old.
'And before long she's stuck.
16 years ago Kiti herself was trapped in mud and only narrowly escaped with her life.'
The other females and Kiti the mom are straight in there to help her.
You can see it now, they're using their trunks and feet to try and encourage her out of the mud.
Look at the way these two are trying to help.
'It's tempting to intervene, but the family has already come to the rescue.
They soon manage to get Naledi back on her feet.'
Mom's got some really fantastic allomothers here, helpers within the family.
Because she can be at the back.
She can be keeping a watch out for predators and animals that might hassle them, whilst the other two females are in there helping the little calf along.
I tell you what...
If you think about what it means to be a family, these guys have absolutely got it sussed.
(JOY) 'The herd is very much a cooperative.
Everyone helps to raise the young.
And in doing so, the adolescent females gain valuable experience for when they become mothers themselves as young teenagers.
Before we leave Botswana, Mark and I witness the caring instincts of the herd in action.
Out in the delta we spot the rest of the elephants in the Abu herd, including the matriarch Cathy.'
Look at this.
This is the most extraordinary scene.
(JOY) 'When a pack of wild dogs arrive at the watering hole a rarely-seen confrontation kicks off.
The dogs are here just to drink but with a young elephant in their midst, the matriarch takes no chances.
(Trumpeting) They're amazing.
It's so exciting to see what's going on there.
The older female is taking on the dogs to try and move them away and stampeding them, running straight at them, trumpeting, trying to make as much noise as possible.
Do you see how they keep putting the baby between them whenever they come close?
I think it's extraordinary how the elephants are protecting that little one.
You can see that remarkable herding instinct, just to keep that little one as safe as possible, while chasing away the dogs.
It's amazing to watch.
'This tight-knit family unit will get Naledi through to adulthood.
When she becomes a teenager she is likely to get pregnant herself.
Elephants remain fertile until they are about 60 years old, when the lining of their uterus has worn down and can no longer hold a fetus.
They then help out by caring for their grandchildren.
Elephants invest a huge amount of time and energy in reproducing and rearing each young calf.
It may seem like a risky strategy.
Many animals produce lots of offspring quickly, to ensure enough survive long enough to mate.
But elephants have evolved a completely different tactic.
They form a highly protective matriarchal society that gives each member of the herd a better chance of living longer.
But sometimes unexpected events can leave a herd very vulnerable.
Six weeks after Naledi was born, we received the very sad news that Kiti had died.
Her large intestine had herniated due to birthing trauma.
She was in so much pain and distress, it was decided she should be put down.
In the wild Naledi would have been lucky to survive without her mother.
But she's been taken into the camp and fed milk by the handlers.
So far she's doing fine.
Hopefully, she will make it.
But whatever Naledi's future holds, where habitat is protected, African elephants thrive, thanks to their remarkable reproductive strategy.'
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