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Elephant’s Unusual Grief Reveals Deep Emotional Complexity in Namibia’s Desert Herd
By Drooid · · How we work
Unusual Grief: Elephant Carries Stillborn Calf
In September 2025, wildlife photographer Federico Veronesi documented a 14-year-old female desert elephant in Namibia’s Huab River area carrying a stillborn calf for several hours, setting it down only to feed or drink before picking it up again. The calf’s limbs were still wrapped around the mother’s trunk, and the infant had not yet stiffened, indicating it had died only hours earlier. The photograph later won the grand prize at the 2026 Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition, run by the Natural History Museum in London.
Context: Namibia’s Desert Elephant Population
The herd observed by Veronesi belongs to a small desert-adapted ecotype of about 150 individuals that roam five riverbeds across the Namib Desert, feeding on Ana tree seedpods and floodplain grass. The population has declined steadily over the past 20 years, driven by prolonged drought and increasing human-elephant conflict over water resources. Calf mortality is extremely high: only two of 16 calves survived between 2014 and 2022. Healthy newborns typically weigh 100–120 kg, whereas the stillborn calves encountered weigh 60–65 kg.
Conservation Concerns and Official Responses
Christin Winter, conservation programme director at Elephant Human Relations Aid (EHRA), explains that the grieving female lost her own calf two years earlier and has since been seen carrying stillborn calves of other elephants on four separate occasions. Winter suggests the behavior may represent “emotional processing” of trauma or a protective effort against predators. EHRA, in partnership with Daniella Chusyd, an assistant professor at Indiana University Bloomington, is collecting dung samples through 2028 to test for heavy metals, PFAS, and hormone levels, and to assess inbreeding within the population.
Verbatim Quotes
- “It's their knowledge that really makes them special and also very vulnerable, because once that knowledge is gone, it can't be readily replaced,” — Winter. The, leading expert
- “We also want to [determine] the degree of inbreeding in this population, compared to other populations, and whether the calves that survive have a different parental pedigree to those that died,” — Chusyd. Joyce Poole
- “She did not carry it but rather tried to lift it and then stood and defended it for two days,” — Chusyd. Joyce Poole
- “Desert elephants are being pushed to the brink of extinction, not just by climate change but by the trophy hunting permits allowed by the Namibian government,” — Chusyd. Joyce Poole
