Baby Elephant at Disney's Animal Kingdom Enjoys Her First Day on the Savannah
It's a happy day for Disney parks guests. The Animal Kingdom park at Walt Disney World has announced a new addition to its savannah exhibit and habitat, a 2-month-old African elephant named Corra. The baby elephant made her debut on the scene on February 15 and has so far won over guests with her big personality. "I think she knows she’s the center of attention," joked director of animal and science operations, Dr. Scott Terrell.
Corra was a hit from the second she entered the savannah.
Corra was unfazed by the tourist at the Kilimanjaro Safaris attraction at the park Thursday morning, the Orlando Sentinel reports. She ran around alongside her mama, Nadirah, her aunts, and grandmother, who also live on the savannah with her.
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Born weighing 200 lbs in December, Corra now weighs 312 pounds. But don't let her size deceive you.
"She is very much a little kid," Terrell told the news outlet.
“They’re always a little clumsy with their trunk, and she tripped over her trunk, and she stumbled in,” he continued. “She loves to climb on things. … She loves to play with bubbles. The team will give her a bubble bath, and she loves to blow bubbles. She loves to play in the water. She loves to annoy her big sister, Stella.
"Everything she does is so cute right now," Haley, an elephant keeper at Animal Kingdom, added in a video the theme park released on TikTok.
"Corra is very clumsy and silly," she continued. "She likes to blow bubbles in her drinker, we give her lots of different enrichment items, she loves to play in her mom's food. So if we put any hay down for Nadira, Corra's there immediately running through it all just having a great time."
"What's fun about Corra is she's actually our first second generation baby," Haley explained. Meaning that Nadira was also born at Disney and now her own baby is following in her footsteps.
Corra's birth marks three generation of African elephants living on the property. The park also announced more exciting news coming up ahead in the future — two more births in 2025.
“Elephants in the wild are a matriarchal society," Terrell explained to the Sentinel. "Multi-generations of elephants live together in the wild, and we’re trying to re-create that wild environment, that natural environment, and with Corra’s birth, we have now created this multigenerational herd of elephants that very much mimics that wild ability for the animals to thrive," he added.
So far Corra has made her family at the savannah stronger.
"It’s definitely brought them closer together. You can see that the younger ones are a little bit more mature when they’re around Corra,” animal care manager, Elizabeth Warncke told the Sentinel. “They understand that you know, this is a calf. We have to protect her. So it’s been very interesting to watch.”
But for now, it seems that everyone at Disney is just buzzing from Corra's debut.
"This is the first baby we've had in seven years," Haley chimed in on TikTok "So this is a really exciting time for us."
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