Emily
When Emily was just a month old, her family was crossing through a prison camp near Tsavo West National Park when the calf fell into a disused pit latrine. She was promptly rescued by park rangers, but her mother — no longer recognizing Emily's scent beneath the stench of human feces — rejected and abandoned her.
It took Emily four months to overcome the physical trauma of falling into the latrine, as well as the psychological anguish of being abandoned by her mother.
In time, she made a full recovery. Despite having lost her own mother at an early age, Emily became a very loving and caring elephant toward the other orphans at the Nairobi nursery.
After two years at the nursery, she joined the older orphans at Voi, a release site in Kenya's Tsavo East National Park, where elephants are reintegrated back into the wild. Eventually, Emily found herself the oldest of the Voi orphans and became their new matriarch.
Today, Emily is no longer dependent on human care, and she lives outside the orphan community at Voi. She still visits the calves almost daily, often leading them to and from the stockades where they spend the night, but otherwise Emily is a wild elephant.
Foster Emily with The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust. (You are leaving discovery.com for a site not operated by or affiliated with Discovery.)
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