An elephant was on Monday rescued from the ocean about 16km off Sri Lanka’s northeast coast, the country’s navy has said.
Navy personnel said the animal was caught in a current off the coast near the town of Kokkilai and dragged into the ocean where it was spotted by a patrol boat.
Sri Lankan Department of Wildlife officials and another navy vessel were dispatched to the area and helped drag the animal back to shore.
Photo: AFP
Avinash Krishnan, a research officer with the conservation group A Rocha, said the discovery of the animal so far from land was less remarkable than it seemed.
“They’re very good swimmers,” he said. “Swimming about 15km from the shore is not unusual for an elephant.”
However, he added that the navy’s intervention was still probably necessary.
“They can’t keep swimming for long because they burn a lot of energy and the salt water isn’t good for their skin, so in this case, the situation probably warranted human intervention,” he said.
He said Asian elephants regularly traversed short distances through the water, including in the Andaman Islands, an Indian archipelago, where they have been observed swimming between the small landforms.
Elephants use their trunks as a natural snorkel, and have a unique lung structure among mammals that allows them to withstand variations in pressure.
Genetically, they are also close relatives of manatees and dugongs, both water-dwelling animals.
Biologists have speculated that elephants might have first reached Sri Lanka by taking a similar route as the one retrieved on Monday, swimming from southern India.
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