When elephant moms need help, nannies step in

In December 2023, a 10-year-old African elephant disappeared from her herd in Kenya’s Samburu National Reserve. When she returned a month later, she was accompanied by two unrelated females, thought to be about 10 and 15 years old; the younger one had a newborn calf in tow.

What happened next was remarkable, according to Giacomo D’Ammando, research manager for the Kenya-based conservation organization Save the Elephants.

“[The recently returned elephant] had stepped into a caregiver role, helping the inexperienced young mother raise her calf, like a nanny,” D’Ammando says. 

While an exceptional story, allomothers—female elephants that help take care of calves that are not their own—have always been around. They play an important role in elephant society by comforting and teaching babies while giving mom a hand.

“They’re essentially nannies and they’re all over elephant society,” says Shifra Goldenberg, a population sustainability scientist for the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, who has studied wild elephants in Kenya.

Sometimes older females like grandmothers and aunts fill this role, “but more commonly, you get this sort of younger age set…who are really attracted to babies, really want to spend time with them and take care of them, and it provides quite a lot of benefits,” she says. Most nannies are less than 15 years old and have never given birth, D’Ammando notes.

Younger allomothers get vital parenting experience as they interact with their adopted calves, Goldenberg explains. Plus, moms get extra eyes on their young one. Since elephants tend to spread out to search for food, “that helps to have more legs and trunks surrounding your baby,” she adds.

According to D’Ammando, elephant nannies spend a lot of time greeting and touching the baby. 

They also comfort distressed calves, often “touching them all over” with their trunk, according to Goldenberg. D’Ammando says nannies step in to assist in a variety of stressful situations—for instance, if a very young calf falls and cannot walk properly, or if they get stuck in the mud or panic after being separated from their mother. 

In high-stress situations, all of the group’s females will engage in a group defense, D’Ammando adds.

For example, in April, a viral video showed a 5.2-magnitude earthquake at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park in Escondido, California. Three of the park’s older female elephants scrambled to form a protective circle around two 6-year-old calves. The actions in this video are a great example of herd dynamics in general, Mindy Albright, the facility’s curator of mammals, says. 

“Survival strategy is key, right?” she says. “And so anytime there’s any kind of signs of danger, you’ll see the herd congregate together and often creating these alert circles where the calves are in the center so that they can be more protected.”  

However, Goldenberg says that the “nanny” elephant’s allomothering instincts also came out during the quake. When one of the young elephants first remained on the outside of the circle, his nanny repeatedly tapped him on the back and face as if to encourage him back in.

According to Goldenberg, the relationship between nanny and baby includes a lot of play, which helps calves build confidence to eventually become independent from mom, a years-long process that’s different for each elephant, though many are nutritionally independent around 4 years of age. Females ultimately stay with their natal group, while males gradually disperse around age 14. 

Elephants also participate in “allosuckling,” with calves nursing from young females for comfort rather than nutrition.

“The allomothers will often sample trying to let the calf nurse from them even though they’re not necessarily lactating,” Albright says of the Safari Park’s herd. “So, you see them practice. They’ll even use their trunk to try to guide them to their nipple, kind of trying to share with them, ‘I can comfort you too, and I’m a resource for that.’” 

Staff at the Safari Park have also witnessed impromptu sleepovers when tired calves wander over to the allomothers while their mom is foraging. 

“They’ll go cuddle with them and sleep in these big giant piles of juveniles all taking care of the babies while the moms can still go and forage throughout the night,” Albright says. “They’re really cute.”