Elephant Lost His Leg On The Bomb

Hybrids
African and Asian elephant species have disjunct distributions, and do not hybridize in the wild. However, in 1978 at Chester Zoo, an Asian elephant cow gave birth to a hybrid calf sired by an African elephant bull. "Motty", the resulting hybrid male calf, had an African elephant's cheeks, ears (large with pointed lobes) and legs (longer and slimmer), but the toenail numbers, (5 for each front foot, 4 hind) and the single trunk finger of an Asian elephant. His wrinkled trunk was like that of an African elephant. His forehead was sloping with one dome and two smaller domes behind it. The body was African in type, but had an Asian-type center hump and an African-type rear hump. The calf died of infection 12 days later. It is preserved as a mounted specimen at the British Natural History Museum, London. There are unconfirmed rumors of three other hybrid elephants born in zoos or circuses; all are said to have been deformed and none survived.