Motty

Individual hybrid elephant

Motty

Breed	(African elephant-Asian elephant hybrid)
Sex	Male
Born	(1978-07-11)11 July 1978 Chester Zoo, Cheshire, England
Died	21 July 1978 (aged 10 days) Chester Zoo, Cheshire, England
Parent(s)	Jumbolino (father) Sheba (mother)
Named after	George Mottershead

Motty (11 July – 21 July 1978) was the only proven hybrid between an Asian and an African elephant. The male calf was born in Chester Zoo, to Asian mother Sheba and African father Jumbolino.^[1] He was named after George Mottershead, who founded the Chester Zoo in 1931.

Appearance

Motty's head and ears were morphologically like Loxodonta (African), while the toenail numbers, with five on the front feet and four on the hind, were that of Elephas (Asian). The trunk had a single trunk finger as seen in Elephas but the trunk length was more similar to Loxodonta. His vertebral column showed an Loxodonta profile above the shoulders transitioning to the convex hump profile of Elephas below the shoulders.^[2]

Cause of death

Due to being born six weeks early, Motty was considered underweight by 27 kg (60 lb). Despite intensive human care, Motty died of an umbilical infection^[3] 10 days after his birth on 21 July. The necropsy revealed death to be due to necrotizing enterocolitis and E. coli septicaemia present in both his colon and the umbilical cord.^[2]

Preservation

His body was preserved by a private company, and is a mounted specimen at the Natural History Museum in London.^[4]

Other hybrids

African forest elephants and African bush elephants are known to hybridize with each other where their ranges overlap.^[5] Analysis of nuclear genomes reconstructed from ancient DNA indicates that members of the extinct elephant genus Palaeoloxodon, including the European straight-tusked elephant had significant introgressed ancestry from African forest elephants and to a lesser extent mammoths.^[6] Genetic evidence suggests that the North American Columbian mammoth was the result of hybrization between two different mammoth populations, with woolly mammoths and Columbian mammoths sometimes hybridizing during the Late Pleistocene in North America.^[7]

References

^ "Motty, an asian elephant x african bush elephant (cross-breed) at Chester Zoo". www.elephant.se. Retrieved 18 January 2019.
^ ^a ^b Rees, P. A. (2021). Elephants Under Human Care: The Behaviour, Ecology, and Welfare of Elephants in Captivity. London: Academic Press. p. 167. ISBN 978-0-12816208-8.
^ "Motty the elephant crossbreed". www.elephant.se. Retrieved 16 May 2019.
^ Yang, H.; Golenberg, E. M.; Shoshani, J. (1997). "Proboscidean DNA from museum and fossil specimens: an assessment of ancient DNA extraction and amplification techniques". Biochemical Genetics. 35 (5): 165–179. doi:10.1023/A:1021902125382. hdl:2027.42/44162. PMID 9332711. S2CID 2144662.
^ Mondol, Samrat; Moltke, Ida; Hart, John; Keigwin, Michael; Brown, Lisa; Stephens, Matthew; Wasser, Samuel K. (2015-12). "New evidence for hybrid zones of forest and savanna elephants in Central and West Africa". Molecular Ecology. 24 (24): 6134–6147. doi:10.1111/mec.13472. ISSN 0962-1083. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
^ Eleftheria Palkopoulou; Mark Lipson; Swapan Mallick; Svend Nielsen; Nadin Rohland; Sina Baleka; Emil Karpinski; Atma M. Ivancevic; Thu-Hien To; R. Daniel Kortschak; Joy M. Raison; Zhipeng Qu; Tat-Jun Chin; Kurt W. Alt; Stefan Claesson; Love Dalén; Ross D. E. MacPhee; Harald Meller; Alfred L. Roca; Oliver A. Ryder; David Heiman; Sarah Young; Matthew Breen; Christina Williams; Bronwen L. Aken; Magali Ruffier; Elinor Karlsson; Jeremy Johnson; Federica Di Palma; Jessica Alfoldi; David L. Adelson; Thomas Mailund; Kasper Munch; Kerstin Lindblad-Toh; Michael Hofreiter; Hendrik Poinar; David Reich (2018). "A comprehensive genomic history of extinct and living elephants". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 115 (11): E2566–E2574. Bibcode:2018PNAS..115E2566P. doi:10.1073/pnas.1720554115. PMC 5856550. PMID 29483247.
^ van der Valk, T.; Pečnerová, P.; Díez-del-Molino, D.; Bergström, A.; Oppenheimer, J.; Hartmann, S.; Xenikoudakis, G.; Thomas, J. A.; Dehasque, M.; Sağlıcan, E.; Fidan, F. Rabia; Barnes, I.; Liu, S.; Somel, M.; Heintzman, P. D.; Nikolskiy, P.; Shapiro, B.; Skoglund, P.; Hofreiter, M.; Lister, A. M.; Götherström, A.; Dalén, L. (2021). "Million-year-old DNA sheds light on the genomic history of mammoths". Nature. 591 (7849): 265–269. Bibcode:2021Natur.591..265V. doi:10.1038/s41586-021-03224-9. ISSN 1476-4687. PMC 7116897. PMID 33597750.