Shanti the elephant is pregnant, Houston Zoo announces

HOUSTON — BIG news from the Houston Zoo just in time for Mother’s Day weekend! Shanti the elephant is pregnant again!

The 33-year-old Asian elephant is expecting a baby at the end of 2024 after a gestation period of 22 months.

The baby daddy is Shanti’s long-term boyfriend, a 58-year-old Thai man.

The sex of the calf will be a surprise because ultrasounds cannot determine whether it is a boy or a girl.

“Shanti is an experienced mother and very attentive to her young as she monitors them closely,” the zoo said in the birth announcement.

Her next big bundle of joy will join siblings Nelson and Joy in the zoo’s elephant herd.

Nelson weighed 385 pounds at birth in 2020. Joy weighed 305 pounds at birth in 2017.

In 2019, Joy survived an often-deadly virus called active elephantendotheliotropic herpesvirus, also known as EEHV. The virus can cause serious illness in young elephants and sometimes fatal hemorrhages.

The zoo’s dedicated animal care team will monitor Shanti closely throughout her pregnancy. They perform weekly blood tests and monitor the elephant’s hormone levels to ensure she is progressing as expected.

After giving birth, Shanti and her newborn will spend several days bonding behind the scenes before he is introduced to the rest of the herd.

A portion of every zoo admission and membership goes toward protecting wild elephants in Asia. The zoo provides funding for elephant conservationist Nurzhafarina “Farina” Othman and her team in Asia to install tracking collars on wild elephants. The collars are used to track elephants and collect critical data used to help protect elephant families as they travel through forests.

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