Grieving elephant mother sedated after standing guard over dead calf hit by lorry
PETALING JAYA: Wildlife officers were forced to sedate a distraught elephant who stood watch for more than five hours beside her calf that was fatally struck and trapped beneath a lorry on the Gerik-Jeli highway.
With the mother elephant refusing to abandon her dead offspring and creating potential hazards for motorists, Wildlife and National Parks Department (Perhilitan) staff administered tranquilisers before safely guiding her away from the roadway.
According to Perak Perhilitan chief Yusoff Shariff, authorities received notification about the incident shortly after 3.30am.
By late morning, approximately 11.30am, wildlife personnel successfully extracted the remains of the young elephant, estimated to be a five-year-old male.
'To ensure the protection of our staff and travelers, we needed to move the mother elephant away from the accident location,' Shariff told Harian Metro.
'There was no alternative but to employ tranquilisers and transport her back into the forest using an off-road vehicle around 9am,' he continued.
'Removing the baby elephant's body was complicated as it required specialised equipment including a recovery vehicle and earth-moving machinery to extract and inter the remains,' the director revealed in his interview with the Malay daily.
Previously, footage had spread across social media platforms depicting a full-grown elephant—the calf's mother—maintaining vigil over her offspring who was pinned beneath the truck.
ALSO READ: Elephant calf dies after being hit by lorry in Gerik, netizens heartbroken over mother elephant
In the heartbreaking video, the mother elephant could be observed attempting to move the vehicle using her head in what appeared to be a desperate effort to rescue her calf.
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