One of the world’s oldest elephants has died on an Indian tea plantation at an estimated age of 89, its handlers said Tuesday.
Although the elephant’s exact age is not known, it is established that he was brought to work on a tea estate by a British farmer during colonial rule in the 1940s. Its minders said he was about 89 years old.
Named “Bijuli Prasad” in the way Indians name humans, the elephant was taken from the wild as a young bull and worked on tea farms in India’s eastern state of Assam’s Sonitpur district until 2018.
“Domestic elephants live up to 80 years, provided they are taken care of well,” said elephant veterinarian Kushal Konwar Sarma, who is Bijuli Prasad’s minder when it started ageing.
“All the teeth of the elephant fell out due to age and it could not eat,” Sarma said. “I changed the diet and asked the caretakers to give him boiled food — mostly rice and soybean with a high protein value.”
Bijuli Prasad is lauded for its strength and is used “to pull out old tea bushes and clear forested area with ease”, and once fought off attackers who tried to seize his long tusks, The Times of India reported.
He was moved to the Behali Tea Estate in Assam, where he died on Monday.
Bijuli Prasad was covered in flowers and given a Hindu funeral with rites carried out by a priest and buried.
Behali deputy manager Ujjal Basnet said the elephant had been the “pride” of the company.
“We had engaged a priest to worship the elephant and two mahouts (elephant keepers) to look after it, though it retired long ago.”
“It was a sudden but peaceful death,” Basnet said.
According to the US-based Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute, Asian elephants could live into their mid-50s, although exact data is scarce.
The oldest known elephant died aged 86 in Taiwan in Taipei Zoo in 2003, according to Guinness World Records.
Known as “Lin Wang” or “Grandpa Lin”, the Asian elephant took supplies through what was then Burma for Japanese forces in World War II.