Elephants are truly astounding creatures and it's only very recently we have begun to truly understand the gentle giants. Their memory is legendary and for good reason. Elephants remember other elephants and humans for decades.?
In one such example, an?elephant touched trunks with her daughter and granddaughter at a zoo in Germany after being separated for 12 years.? ?
According to a Mail Online report, in the wild, bull elephants leave the herd to find a mate but female elephants tend to remain with their mothers for life.
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The reunion of the family is part of a programme to slowly recreate this natural process in herds being held in captivity.?The photographs of the reunited elephants were taken at Bergzoo in Germany's eastern city of Halle, states the Mail Online report.?
'Pori's arrival in Halle is an important step in modern elephant husbandry,' Zoo director, Dr Dennis Muller was quoted as saying on the Zoo's official website.?
'In the future, all elephant herds in European zoos should be cared for in such natural family structures. Today we have come a great deal closer to this goal,' he added.?
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The 39-year-old elephant named Pori was shifted from her former home in Berlin to the Bergzoo in the eastern city of Halle, where a reunion with her 19-year-old daughter Tana was set up after 12 years of separation and Pori promptly remembered her.?
She even touched tunks with her granddaughter Tamika, 4, who she has now met for the first time.?
For now, Pori is in a separate enclosure from her offspring but in the next few days they will spend time together in the outer section to get accustomed to each other.
Pori is an African elephant who was born wild in Zimbabwe in 1981.?
She brought to Germany to the Magdeburg Zoo, where she lived from 1983 to 1997 and was then sent off to Tierpark Berlin for breeding purposes. In?2001, she gave birth and raised her first calf Tana, reports the Halle Zoo official website.
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