Osh, a seventeen year old African elephant at the Oakland zoo was imported to the U.S. from Howlett’s wild animal park in the U.K.in 2004. His origins are pretty interesting, so try to keep up with me. Osh is an inbred animal, his father is his mother’s half brother. His mother Shara and father Yossi were both born at the Ramat Gan Zoo in Isreal, where he was conceived. When his mother, Shara was TWENTY months pregnant, she was transferred to Howlett’s where Osh was born in 1994. Sometime after 2006 his mother died of unknown reasons. Osh has fifteen siblings through his father Yossi, four females and eleven males.
Although his lineage may be well, if not over represented in Europe, Osh’s blood line is new to the united states. He has yet to be used in the artificial insemination program, or breed naturally to the two breeding age females at the zoo, Donna and Eloise. He has recently grown too large for the current barn, forcing the zoo to construct him his own personal bull holding facility (which I speculate will include the proper equipment for semen collection).
The Oakland zoo acquired Osh as a replacement for their previous breeding male, Smokey who died in 2001. He produced five calves,although none of them survived longer than one year.
I truly hope the zoo breeds it’s two aging females, and finds a way to fit Osh into the nation wide breeding program. The cow’s biological clocks are ticking as one is 35, and the other 32, with the last birth occurring in 2001.
Fingers crossed for Osh, and the Oakland zoo.
gorgeousingray 