She was only a few days old when rescuers found her trapped in a ditch, dehydrated and in grave danger of dying from heat stroke.
Beatrix the orphan baby elephant was nursed back to good health but her traumatic start to life had left her feeling timid all the time.
Then Kadiki, an older orphan at the same sanctuary, stepped in to help. As our heart-warming pictures show, she even gently wrapped her trunk around Beatrix to reassure her the day she first met other - and much bigger - members of the herd at their haven in Zimbabwe.
‘Elephants never forget’, or so the old adage goes. In this case, Kadiki could perhaps have been remembering her own tough start when she dished out the ‘trunk cuddles’.
Beatrix the orphan baby elephant was nursed back to good health but her traumatic start to life had left her feeling timid all the time. Then Kadiki, an older orphan at the same sanctuary, stepped in to help
The Mail reported in 2019 how Kadiki, whose name means ‘the little one’ in the local Shona language, survived against the odds after being attacked by a lion when only a day old, suffering deep claw wounds to her trunk and terrible damage to her tail.
She was taken in by veteran animal rescuer Roxy Danckwerts, founder of the Wild Is Life charity and its Zimbabwe Elephant Nursery (ZEN). After surgery to amputate part of her tail and treatment to her trunk, Kadiki was well enough to walk about again despite being on a drip. She is now thriving.
Elephants live in a matriarchal society with ‘aunty’ figures helping to care for a herd’s young in the wild. When Beatrix arrived at the sanctuary shortly before Christmas, keepers expected another, older female elephant called Moyo, eight, would be the one to look out for little
