Shocking Footage of Baby Elephant Tossed Around by Adult, Explained | National Geographic

Suddenly, a young male comes into view, pushing a baby elephant. "Oh my God, that's a boom!" No, no, he picks it up.

Oh, meanwhile, a female, if the baby's mother, I believe, comes in and tries to rescue the calf and runs in front of him. He runs after her with an erection. He's chasing after the infant's mother and backs up toward the infant, who was looking for its mother, and goes back and grabs the infant again, pushing it. He still has an erection and puts his, what we call, reach over. He rests his trunk across the infant's back, which is what's done also when a male mounts a female. Where we were, he moved before.

Meanwhile, there's commotion, anathema, where the left one tusk is trying to rescue the baby. The male picks up the calf and drops it again. A young female, a tuskless female, is also there, but then the mother runs past him, and the male chases after her.

In observations that I've made around the birth of a baby elephant or around newborns, young males seem to get very excited by the smell of a new mother. I've always found it quite fascinating because when a baby is born, the whole family will rumble and trumpet and create an incredible commotion, and that commotion attracts a lot of males who come in to see, you know, what may be happening in the family.

Maybe the sounds are similar to when a female is mated, and they come in. What I've seen is that the young males get very confused by the smell of the mother, and they get excited, they get erections, they try and mount the female. The male in question is in his 20s, and this is the age group that still is not able to discriminate, it seems, between the smells of a new mother and of a receptive female.

The strange as it seems, [Music] you.