Sedgwick County Zoo elephant now at home in Atlanta
WICHITA, Kan. (KSNW) – Titan, one of the Sedgwick County Zoo's longtime elephants, is now at home at Zoo Atlanta. According to Zoo Atlanta, he arrived today.
The Association of Zoos and Aquariums' African Elephant Species Survival Plan recommended that he move to a new herd, which mirrors what adult male elephants do in the wild. Titan's mother, Simunye, will remain at Sedgwick County Zoo. They both arrived in Kansas in 2016 after being rescued from drought-stricken Eswatini.
Zoo Atlanta says Titan will be a valuable social companion among the elephant group, which includes adult male Msholo and adult females Kelly and Tara, both now considered post-reproductive.
While Sedgwick County Zoo prepares for 5 new elephants, 1 is leaving
'We are very excited to welcome Titan to the elephant herd at Zoo Atlanta, where he will benefit from the daily stewardship of a world-class Elephant Care Team and an environment that represents the most significant transformation in Zoo Atlanta history,' said Raymond B. King, President and CEO. 'Our hope is that in getting to know Titan as he becomes a new part of the herd here at the Zoo, our Members and guests will have renewed reasons to join us in protecting African elephants, which have a very uncertain future without conservation action.'
Titan will spend the next several weeks acclimating before he will be visible to members and guests of the zoo.
Meanwhile, the Sedgwick County Zoo is preparing for the birth of five elephants and shared video of Arusi's growing calf and heartbeat. The Zoo says they won't know if Titan was the father of any of the calves until after they are born.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
16 hours ago
- Yahoo
'Titan' Sub Pilot, Who Led Trip That Killed 5, Was Like the 'Emperor Who Had No Clothes': Former Colleague (Exclusive)
Two years since OceanGate's Titan sub imploded — killing five people — and a fuller picture is now emerging about what really happened before and during tragedy "The emperor had no clothes when I arrived," former employee David Lochridge says of working with OeanGate co-founder Stockton Rush The company tells PEOPLE in a statement: "We again offer our deepest condolences to the families of those who died"David Lochridge doesn't mince words when it comes to describing his time working for Stockton Rush at the experimental diving company OceanGate, which eventually launched a doomed quest down to the Titanic in 2023 — and five people died. 'I didn't realize that they were so good at cutting corners until I actually got across there,' Lochridge tells PEOPLE in a new interview, marking one of the fist times he is speaking publicly. In the two years since OceanGate's Titan sub imploded — killing Rush, the company's co-founder, and four passengers — a fuller picture is now emerging about what really happened before and during tragedy. The U.S. Coast Guard is preparing to release a final report, after lengthy investigation. Some of those close to Rush and the victims, like Lochridge, are also speaking out, including in Netflix's new documentary Titan: The Oceangate Disaster, which premieres on Wednesday, June 11. Lochridge also appeared on the Today show on Friday, June 6. A former diver in the U.K.'s Royal Navy, he worked as OceanGate's operations director until early 2018 and says he was closely involved in the training and preparation for what the company promised to potential explorers (for a hefty fee): trips to wondrous undersea artifacts like the wreck of the Titanic off the coast of Canada. "The company needed a lot of I would say my experience put into it to be able to create this competent team, to be able to actually go out and perform this job that they wanted me to do,' Lochridge says. But 'the emperor had no clothes when I arrived." "I'll never forget this. It was Day 1 [working at OceanGate in 2016]. We landed. … Stockton, I think he was at home or at [the lab], and he stated that the new submersible Titan would not be having any underwater communications in it,' Lochridge recalls. 'I honestly thought he was joking,' he says of Rush, 'but he was deadly serious.' In the roughly two years that Lochridge was a top official at OceanGate, 'I was always met with a lot of resistance,' he says. 'But at the same time, I had to watch what I was doing. I was the new boy in the company.' He says safety warnings included more than an initial lack of concern over underwater communication. Lochridge cites the monitoring system for the Titan's novel carbon fiber hull — the same system that showed eerie cracking noises. 'If I had heard noises like that in a sub, I would never go on it again,' Lochridge says. 'Nobody would ever go on it again.' He also says some of the glue used to put components together was applied merely with spatulas. 'There was nobody there verifying that there were no voids,' he says. 'And it's like somebody putting icing on a birthday cake.' Amid the scrutiny and criticism from people like Lochridge, however, Rush and OceanGate do have defenders for the work they were attempting. (And another person who went on OceanGate dives previously pushed back on Lochridge.) "I believe that it was a noble effort," Fred Hagen, a developer who made two successful trips to the Titanic on Titan, tells PEOPLE. "The goals were to enable mankind to access the depths of the abyss and to further our understanding and to foster a sense of connectivity to the bottom of the sea, which is integral to the future of life on Earth," Hagen continues. "And Stockton took some risk and lived outside the box and paid for it with his life." Never miss a story — sign up for to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories. Lochridge's own relationship with Rush and OceanGate collapsed by early 2018 and he was fired well before the final, fatal dive. He says he sought to speak out about the company for years, behind closed doors, starting with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. 'Even during my termination, he [Rush] said, 'You know, this could fail,' — which it did,' Lochridge says, adding, 'Unfortunately, … people were in it.' In a statement to PEOPLE, OceanGate said, 'We again offer our deepest condolences to the families of those who died on June 18, 2023, and to all those impacted by the tragedy.' In the wake of the implosion, the company said, 'OceanGate permanently wound down its operations and focused its resources on fully cooperating with the investigations being conducted.' Read the original article on People
Yahoo
20 hours ago
- Yahoo
Researchers delve into history of Utah's ‘buffalo soldiers,' create trail recalling their presence
For perhaps the first time, Utah historians have organized much of the history surrounding the Black soldiers who served in Utah in the post-Civil War era to make sure it isn't forgotten. 'We didn't have any idea what we were getting ourselves into, and it's just mountains of information we've been able to bring to light because of this,' said Ian Wright, director of the Utah Cultural Site Stewardship Program, which is overseeing the effort. The research started in 2023 and the historians involved have created the Buffalo Soldier Heritage Trail linking several sites of note involving those first Black soldiers, known at the time as buffalo soldiers. Public events are set for Friday and Saturday at three of the sites, with signage geared to the general public to eventually be placed at the locations to promote interest in the history. 'A lot of folks know about the buffalo soldiers, but they don't usually connect them to Utah,' Wright said. Around a quarter of all African-American soldiers who served in the western United States in the period of westward U.S. settlement following the Civil War, though, came through the state, he said. As part of the initial public presentation of project findings, three simultaneous talks are scheduled for Friday at the Fort Douglas Military Museum in Salt Lake City, the Price Prehistoric Museum in Price and the Uintah County Heritage Museum in Vernal. On Saturday, driving tours will be held through three areas of note in the history of buffalo soldiers in Utah, starting in Salt Lake City, Price and Vernal. Participants must register online and organizers will send additional event details to those signing up to take part. Wright said some of the buffalo soldier history has been preserved in places like Carbon and Uintah counties and Fort Douglas, where some of the soldiers were stationed. 'But for the large part, it's kind of been overlooked a little bit here in Utah. One of our goals is to connect back into that larger story and bring this history to life, to help to safeguard that,' he said. 'The information's out there; it had just never kind of been pulled together in a way where people could see.' Two regiments of buffalo soldiers, the 24th Infantry at Fort Douglas and the 9th Calvary at Fort Duchesne, served in Utah, part of the U.S. military contingent assigned to the American West to protect settlers moving to the area. Wright said their presence was most pronounced in Utah from around 1878 to 1901. Well over 1,000 buffalo soldiers served in Utah, he estimates, with varied roles in Ford Douglas, Fort Duchesne, Carter Military Road, Gate and Nine Mile canyons, Moab, Helper, Price and Vernal, the key stops on the Buffalo Soldier Heritage Trail. While their official role was to protect settlers from attacks by the Native American population, the buffalo soldiers faced other challenges, notably discrimination from within the military ranks and from the communities they served. 'Not only is it a military story, it's an American story, it's a Western story, it's an African American story. It's just got so many neat nuances,' Wright said. Wright and his team, which operates under the umbrella of the Utah State Historic Preservation Office, have been working with the Sema Hadithi African American Heritage and Cultural Foundation, based in West Valley City. Reps from the University of Utah's American West Center, the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management have also helped. Much of the history they've organized and unearthed is available online and in an audiobook.
Yahoo
a day ago
- Yahoo
Titan Sub Disaster: Discovery Documentary Shows Wendy Rush Reacting To Fatal ‘Bang'
Newly released video footage captured when OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush's wife reacted in real-time to the Titan submersible's fatal implosion last year. Stockton and his wife both have long, storied family histories in America, which were under speculation before the submarine went viral for killing its five passengers last year. The submarine lacked many of the qualifications, certifications, and even respected design systems that previous deep-water subs all had in their pockets. From the start, even the most vocal in the deep-sea diving industry, like renowned filmmaker James Cameron, were rightfully worried about OceanGate's missions. Stockton's wife, Wendy, the daughter of the couple who founded the Macy's department store, can be seen shockingly aware in the recently released video that something went wrong on the 'Titan's' final, deadly dive. The chilling footage, obtained by the U.S. Coast Guard and featured in the Discovery documentary Implosion: The Titanic Sub Disaster, shows Wendy seated in front of a computer on the 'mother ship,' or launching ship of the submarine above, as the sub descended toward the Titanic's wreckage nearly 4,000 feet below on June 18, 2023. Stockton took on the job, alongside the OceanGate team, of continuing to put tourists on the faulty submarine. One documentary team even went on a short dive with the Titan and Stockton before the host of Expedition Unknown, Josh Gates, had to call his channel's executive and beg that the media team be pulled from such a liability of an assignment. In lamens terms, the submarine was already cracked in the main hull and showed signs of its weakness to even the most untrained eyes – like TV hosts. According to the newly released footage, Wendy can be seen suddenly reacting to a loud sound: the very moment the sub's carbon-fiber hull catastrophically failed, killing all five people aboard instantly. In response, she can be seen calmly asking two other OceanGate staff in the video, 'What was that bang?' At the time, the Titan was at a depth of about 3,300 meters, where the immense underwater pressure left no survivors and almost immediately killed all aboard, as confirmed by The victims included Stockton Rush, British explorer Hamish Harding, renowned French diver Paul Henri Nargeolet, and British-Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood with his 19-year-old son, Suleman. Suleman, at his age and lack of deep diving experience, had no reason to be on the submarine, but Stockton had decided that it was fine even in the unregulated vessel. The submarine was manned by modified PlayStation controllers, something Stockton previously bragged to the media about, per CBS News. While the tragedy officially began with the implosion, the Coast Guard's investigation revealed a dangerous flaw—delamination (a breakdown of the main hull's carbon fiber)—had been detected as early as 2022. Despite repeated warnings from engineers and fellow deep-sea explorers, OceanGate pressed forward with risky expeditions, pushing their unconventional carbon-fiber design that had never been properly certified. As seen in the documentary, the carbon fiber design had failed on previous dives, emitting loud bangs to all onboard. This forced Stockton and OceanGate to completely redesign a similar submarine, which also failed. The carbon fiber wasn't the only weird engineering choice. OceanGate also chose to build a submarine that, in the most simple of ways, mismatched previous submarine designs that successfully reached those dangerous depths. Instead of the widely accepted, in terms of modern deep-sea diving experts, a teardrop-shaped vessel that barely holds one or two passengers, Stockton demanded that his design resemble the stereotypical 'log in the water' design to carry more passengers. More unregulated passengers in an unregulated submarine started to raise concerns among many industry experts before its final tragic implosion. James Cameron's deep-sea submarine, which reached the deepest depths of the ocean floor, was shaped like that raindrop design. His successful dives can be seen in his 2014 film DeepSea Challenge. Cameron has publicly told many media outlets that Stockton and OceanGate were a red flag even before the tragic accident. After the disaster, OceanGate ceased operations and pledged cooperation with the United States Coast Guard investigation. Some engineers and 'dive experts' are now testifying to the Coast Guard about how they understood that Stockton was losing his mind and that the submarine was destined to fail. Some employees claimed to the documentary team that Stockton fired them when voicing concerns or that they were anxious about voicing concerns about retaining their jobs at OceanGate.
