Born in the Wild – TV review

http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2014/jun/09/born-in-the-wild-tv-review

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How do you get sperm from an elephant? Not a joke, but an actual problem that comes up in Born in the Wild (Channel 4, Sunday). It's not just a case of getting the elephant to drop into the fertility department of the local animal hospital, handing him some elephant porn (50 Shades Of Grey?) and a container (bucket probably, for an elephant), then letting him get on with it. They don't do that.

No, it's a major operation, requiring a lot of highly skilled people, plus air support. The bull elephant is darted, from a helicopter. Then the ground team, which includes telly vet Mark Evans, goes in – fast, because the anaesthetic also acts on the muscle that retracts the elephant's penis into its sheath. Quick, before the long schlong's gone.

They're in time, and the lady elephant fertility expert gets a sturdy strap round the end of it, ow! And a man inserts "an electrode ejaculator" into the elephant's bum, to stimulate the nerves to produce an erection, while someone else gets a large homemade condom ready.

"It's coming, it's coming," says the expert, as they increase the current. Not that it's coming coming, yet – just coming out, growing, which it keeps doing, on and on: 1.4 metres, they measure. "You can pull a bit more," the expert tells Mark, as she strokes further back. Then suddenly the elephant penis comes to life, starts twitching, violently, striking out like an angry python. Jesus, what have they done to the poor animal?

Oh, it's OK, just an elephant penis's natural searching response. Cheerful anatomist Joy Reidenberg explains that it's necessary in order to navigate and find a lady elephant's almost unfairly complicated bits.

Anyway, after tugging and stroking and turning the current up to 11, they get their sample, eventually – disappointingly little, given the scale of everything else; just a few millilitres, no bucket required. But that's actually good, it means the male contraception they're using to keep numbers in check is working. Last time they tried to control the elephant population of South Africa they culled dozens of dominant bulls. But that meant lots of immature males suddenly came into "musth" (short for musth 'ave sex, I think) too early and went on a terrifying adolescent testosterone-fuelled rampage, sex-pesting everything, including rhinos. It's a sorry sight, the look of resigned indignation and humiliation on the face of a (male) rhino being dry-humped by a sex-crazed elephant. Yeah, who's horny now?

More touching, though no less spectacular, than the semen sample collection is Kiti giving birth up the road in Botswana. Yes, Kiti might not sound like an elephant, but she is one, and she had a run-in with a crocodile in her youth, still has the tooth marks in her trunk to prove it. Maybe she is the original Elephant's Child from Kipling's Just-So Stories; the great grey-green greasy Limpopo river (all set about with fever trees) does border Botswana, doesn't it? What, The Elephant's Child was a he? And Richard Dawkins wouldn't approve anyway, that's not how evolution actually happened ...

Whatever, Kiti is giving birth to her own child now. Not actually in the wild, but in an enclosure, so the title of the programme is a bit of a lie. But it's still extraordinary, and it's all on camera, like an elephants' One Born Every Minute. So, one born every 22 months, if you're lucky.

Kiti becomes agitated, trumpeting and kicking at the ground during a stormy night. Boom, her waters break; bloody hell, it's Victoria Falls, or Mosi-oa-Tunya, if you want to be less Rudyard about it. Wrong country? Yeah, well, it's somewhere around these parts. I presume.

The bulge moves downward, then suddenly it just drops out, on to the dirt, a baby elephant. About 100kg falling nearly a metre, that's a hell of an entrance, no wonder it looks shocked. As does Kiti, who backs off suspiciously, as if to say: WTF is that, that just fell out of me? She's not going to reject her baby – a girl, it turns out – is she? Phew, a mother's love kicks in, she reaches down, for a trunk-nuzzle. Arrhh! Is there anything as adorable as a baby elephant? Cute factor turned up to 11 too, as Mark the vet says.

But noooooo! A terrible postscript. Six weeks later, Kiti tragically dies. Now somewhere in southern Africa is an adorable (not so) little lonely orphan. Don't tell Madonna, I'll have her.