Africa’s ‘largest’ female tusked elephant dies.
Dida, the “largest” female tusked elephant in Africa, dies in Kenya. Wildlife officials say the matriarch died of natural circumstances at the age of 60 to 65.
Dida had famous large tusks and lived to be between 60 and 65 years old, which is the maximum lifespan for an elephant in the wild.
According to wildlife experts, Dida, an elephant in Kenya thought to have been Africa’s largest female tusker, passed away from old age.
The majestic matriarch, known for her huge tusks and beloved by tourists, was between 60 and 65 years old, far older than the typical life span of an elephant in the wild.
The Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS), which posted pictures of the elephant along with the statement, stated on Twitter, “She died from natural causes due to old age having had a full life.”
One of the six iconic female tuskers in Tsavo – “X-Tusk”
These females provide one half of the valuable Big Tusker genes for future generations of majestic elephants in Tsavo.
🎥 Brian Montalbo pic.twitter.com/8G4sB30S1I
— Hannes Kächele (@hannes_1961) November 25, 2023
Dida, known to visitors and locals alike as “the queen of Tsavo,” resided in Kenya’s southernmost Tsavo East National Park.
The greatest protected region in the abundantly wildlife-filled nation is Tsavo.
The KWS said that Dida was “a remarkable repository of many decades worth of information and a genuinely iconic matriarch of Tsavo” and that she was the focus of numerous documentaries.
She cared for her herd through a variety of seasons and trying times.
While bull elephants tend to be more reclusive, female elephants frequently live in close-knit groups with newborn calves by their sides.
Dida was praised by the conservation organisation Tsavo Trust as a “real representation of an iconic cow” who will be remembered by elephants in the future.
It said on Facebook that she would be better remembered “from the lessons they learned as they witnessed their matriarch pass her careful judgement.”
Dida’s demise occurs just a month after the passing of another famous elephant in Samburu, a dry region that, like most of northern Kenya, is experiencing the driest circumstances in the past 40 years.
Monsoon, a mother of seven calves, was shot five times during a raging poaching crisis about ten years ago that caused the continent’s wild elephant population to plummet. Despite this, she managed to survive.
In Kenya, Somalia, and Ethiopia, four rainy seasons in a row have failed, an unparalleled meteorological phenomenon that has plunged millions of people around the Horn of Africa into terrible starvation.
As Africa’s ‘largest’ female tusked elephant dies, older elephants and newborn calves are the first to perish during protracted drought.
A video of residents in central Kenya watching “helplessly” as an elephant perished from terrible starvation was posted on Monday by the Kenyan station NTV.
