Source: “Elephant Memories” by Cynthia MossWhen Teresia was born in 1922 she weighed about 260 pounds and stood approximately two feet nine inches at the shoulder. Her brain weighed 35 percent of what it would weigh as an adult. (The human brain is 26 percent of its adult weight at birth; most other mammal brains are 90 percent of the adult weight at birth.)
Teresia probably spent the first four years of her life in very close proximity to her mother and her siblings and other relatives in the family. She depended on her mother for both milk and care. When she was around four [4] years old, a younger sister or brother was most likely born and Teresia was weaned. At four [4] she would have taken great interest in her new sibling and lavished it with attention. At the same time she was developing her own social relationships within the family and learning elephant protocol. As a young calf she would have been tolerated in most situations, but as she got older she had to learn about dominance and aggression as well as affiliation. She would also have begun to know elephants from other families and her own family’s position in relation to them…
Starting sometime in her ninth [9th] or tenth [10th] year Teresia’s body began to go through changes and in her eleventh [11th] or twelfth [12th] year, if conditions were adequate and there was not a drought, she probably came into estrus (發情期) for the first time and experienced all the confusion, fear, and excitement of that event… Her body went through further changes as the fetus grew and various hormones went into action. Her breasts filled out gradually over the months. By the time she was 18 months pregnant her sides were bulging and the weight of the fetus slowed her down. She probably had to feed more than before, because she, as well as the fetus, was continuing to grow. At her age she was only about two thirds [2/3] the size of a full-grown adult female.
At 13 to 14 years old Teresia probably gave birth to her first calf…
If her first calf lived out its early years, then Teresia would have come into estrus again when it was about two [2] and given birth to a new calf when it was four [4] and she herself was 17 to 18. For the next three [3] decades of her life Teresia was either lactating or pregnant or both, as she would continue to suckle her youngest calf until the next one was born. After 50 Teresia’s breeding slowed down considerably…
In those middle years, when she was reproductively most active, important social changes were also occurring. Whoever was matriarch when she was born, possibly her grandmother, would have died and the next-oldest female taken over…
I think it could be said that in the last decade of her life Teresia was in her old age. I do not know if elephants become senile. Teresia always seemed to have all her faculties intact. She stayed with her family, continued to interact with them, and was as tolerant
and sweet-natured as she was when I first knew her. Teresia must have been a particularly caring and in some way attractive grandmother because Theodora’s
[Theodora is one of Teresia’s daughter] calf spent far more time with her than with his own mother. I those last two years, whenever I saw the family, he was often following Teresia or standing next to her… Teresia was still a vital part of the family in her old age.
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