Opal an African savanna elephant at Colchester Zoo

Location

Opal is a Female ♀ African savanna elephant (Loxodonta africana), living in Colchester Zoo, in United Kingdom.

Opal arrived in Colchester Zoo 1998-02-28, relocated from Mary Chipperfield, in United Kingdom.

In Colchester Zoo, Opal lives together with 3 other elephants with records in this database: (detailed list)

1. ♀ Tanya born 1981
,
2. ♂ Tembo born 1983
,
3. ♀ Zola born 1982
, (see detailed list).

Offspring

1. () 2010-02-24 -- † 2010-02-24 stillborn

Origin

Opal was born wild 1982 at Africa unspecified location, captured 1985 .

1998-02-28: Opal was sold to Colchester by Mary Chipperfield.

Opal the elephant became pregnant by fellow herd-member Tembo at Colchester Zoo through artificial insemination and is expected to give birth in the spring of next year. Over the last 10 years bull elephant Tembo has fathered four young of whom two were born at Colchester, Kito and Jambo.
Tembos other calves born through artificial insemination were Abu, who was born in April 2001 in Vienna, and Thabo-Umasai, who was born at Dresden Zoo in February 2006.
Opal the Elephant is Pregnant, 01/27/2009

It turned out to be a case of “Whos the (big) daddy?”
Because today it emerged that an elephant credited with siring a yet-to-be-born calf had nothing to do with the pregnancy.
Yesterday Colchester Zoo announced that Opal, a cow elephant at the Stanway attraction, had become pregnant thanks to its bull elephant Tembo.
Tembo, who has been at the zoo with Opal for 10 years, is already a father of four - Kito, Jambo, Abu and Thabo-Umasi.
But it transpires that when Opal was artificially inseminated recently, it was not Tembo who was the donor.
Instead, the father will be a bull elephant called Jack, who lives in the West Midlands.
The zoo issued a correction this morning.
Elephant Paternity Mix-Up at Zoo, 01/30/2009

2010-03-04: Thomas Hildebrandt, from the Leibniz Institute commented that, “based on our intensive discussions with Colchester Zoo, it is very likely that the full-term calf in the African elephant Opal died during the birthing process.

Sources used for this article is among others:

• Jelle Boef

Internal relevant links

• More elephants from: Colchester Zoo
• More elephants from: United Kingdom
• More elephants that was born: 1982
• More elephants that was captured: 1985
• All breeding cows
• All breeding bulls
• The elephant database startpage. Statistics
• List of all captive born elephants in the database

External relevant links (Opens in new window)

Search more on the web for Opal

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• elephant-news.com
• Billboard
• Buckles Blog
• circushistory.org
• Elephant_Commentator
• Elefanten-Fotolexikon.eu
• elefanten.wikia
• Google Internet search
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• ZooChat