Today we're talking about Swarna. She's a 46-year-old Asian elephant
Swarna had difficulty chewing food the way she should have been able to do
so you could tell she had something going on with her teeth.
We could see that Swarna’s poop didn’t have the fibers chewed up
the way you’d normally expect to see in elephant poop.
And all that indicates that she has a dental issue of some sort.
Elephants have four big molars, two on either side of their jaw that grind up the food.
Because of the kinds of food they eat, they wear those molars down.
So elephants have adapted to go through multiple sets of those teeth throughout their life.
They'll go through six sets of teeth, so the new tooth grows in and pushes out the old tooth
and that repeats itself.
What happened with Swarna was when her last set came in, it did not fully dislodge the previous set,
and that's preventing her jaws from connecting properly and chewing the way she should have been able to chew.
For an elephant, you can't really take them to the dentist,
You have to bring the dentist and the dental office and all their equipment to the elephant.
Because elephant dentistry is a pretty specific topic and a rare skillset, we worked with the Colyer Institute.
They are experts in elephant dentistry
and they helped consult us through this process
and participated on the procedure on the day we did it
In order to provide for everybody's safety and Swarna’s safety
and guarantee that she were to lay down under anesthesia in the position that we needed her
we determined as a team that the best way to do that was to train Swarna
for a series of restraints that would help guide her into position.
Because restraints aren't really a part of our elephants’ everyday life here,
it's something that has to be trained.
That meant spending months of time building the rapport,
getting her used to the various attachments that we would put on her
so that it was just a typical experience for her.
She would come in, this is what we do, she's being fed the whole time with her favorite treats
and so that way we could provide the necessary restraining equipment in a way that was safe and not stressful for Swarna.
Swarna was eager to participate. She was engaged in the whole process.
She accepted the restraints like she has every day,
allowed the vet to give her the injection without stress
and then with the use of the restraints, we were able to guide her down to the ground
and in the position we needed all with fairly little fanfare
so we were thrilled.
We were expecting hours.
Luckily, we were able to get the tooth out, wrap up the procedure
and get her back on her feet far quicker than we had anticipated being able to do.
All the training and planning paid off and Swarna was a champ
and the procedure went as smoothly as possible.
One of the cool things about this experience for me
was the number of people that were involved in this procedure.
We had vets working with vet specialists, working with animal care teams and with our nutrition department.
It was a huge group of people all working together
to provide for Swarna’s welfare and ultimately have a successful outcome.
Now she's back to normal
and we expect to see that her dental issue continue to improve.
We'll see the real benefit of this procedure over the next several months.
There are less than 50,000 Asian elephants left on Earth,
and a significant portion of those elephants are living under human care.
And we want to make sure that that part of the population,
as well as those living in the wild,
are living and thriving to the best of our ability.
The more we're able to learn about how to care for elephants properly,
the more we're able to ensure the survival of the species going forward.