Zoo elephants protect their young as earthquake shakes San Diego

As Ndlula, Umngani and Khosi felt the ground rattle beneath them, the mighty African elephants sprung into action — forming a tight circle around their youngsters in a moving display of protective instinct in the face of Monday’s earthquake.

The elephants, who live at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park in Escondido, were engaging in a defensive behavior known as an “alert circle,” which is used in the wild to protect the youngest members of the herd from threats, said Mindy Albright, curator of mammals at the zoo.

The Safari Park captured the herd’s defensive formation on camera as a magnitude 5.2 earthquake rattled the region, sending shock waves through the elephant enclosure and across Southern California.

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As the earth began to shake around 10 a.m., the elder elephants in the enclosure rushed to encircle the youngsters, the video shows.

“It was really neat to see them come together as a herd to protect the juvenile and then immediately try to survey their habitat,” she said. “Elephants have an incredible sense of hearing — they can feel sound through their feet — so you can see them pause after they all formed the alert circle to see if they could get any more information from the environment.”

After roughly four minutes, the elephants determined the danger had passed and exited the circle, although they remained close together.

Ndlula and Umngani are 35-years-old, Khosi is 18 and half-siblings Zuli and Mkhaya are both 7. Albright said it was particularly interesting that although Zuli and Mkhaya are the same age, Zuli tried to position himself on the outside of the alert circle.

“Instead of being in the center of that protective circle, he was on the outside as one of the protectors and to see that evolution of his social responsibility within the herd is really interesting,” she said.

African elephants typically live to be 60 to 70 years old in the wild, thanks in part to the survival advantages they obtain through their protective family social structures. In the wild, herds might form alert circles to protect their young from predators, humans or other elephants fighting, Albright said.

This defense tactic is also a testament to elephants’ communication skills. Elephants can speak to each other using infrasonic rumbles — sounds that humans are incapable of hearing — that travel long distances and warn other nearby elephants of potential danger.

Oftentimes it is the older elephants in the herd that determine whether the group should flee, investigate the danger or resume normal activities.

The elephants at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park similarly formed an alert circle in 2010 when the magnitude 7.2 Baja California earthquake rattled the region, Albright said.

“Elephants are very unique” she said. “I think one of the things that makes them so likable is their connectedness to each other, which you can really see in moments like these.”