Tuberculosis tests of KNP elephants is a jumbo task

There was no way the elephant bull, racing down the Skukuza landing strip, was ever going to escape the cumulative effect of the sedative coursing through his veins or the Kruger National Park (KNP) helicopter shepherding him.

As impressive as a seven-ton elephant bull is in his prime at top speed, it didn’t take the opioid-based sedative long to have him asleep before he hit the ground.

Fortunately, the drug administered by senior manager of KNP veterinary services Dr Peter Buss via dart from the aforementioned helicopter yesterday slowed the 40-year-old African elephant to a slow crawl before it toppled over.

Then, it was the turn of the ground crew to secure the pachyderm and give the all clear before scientists could approach to begin the new season of testing for the human strain of tuberculosis in the Kruger elephant population.

According to lead researcher from the Stellenbosch University, Professor Michele Muller, the testing is currently in its third year and yesterday’s sedation marked elephant number 37 since the last one in April last year.

Since then, one minor case of bovine tuberculosis had been discovered in the 19,000-plus strong Kruger herd and no new cases of human TB had been found.

The disease was discovered in an elephant that had died of old age in 2016.

Obtaining specimens for culture and testing was an arduous task, involving brute force to open the elephant’s mouth by four men pulling on a rope to move its lower jaw. This was followed by Buss having to move its massive tongue out of the way, leaving him red-faced at the exertion.

This was in order to introduce a 5cm pipe down its trachea, so sterile saline water could be squirted into the elephant’s lungs to wash mucus off the lung walls, so it could be vacuumed back out for later analysis.

The project was initially set to sample about 70 elephants. However, Buss said yesterday 50 elephants would provide the sample they needed.

Whatever the results revealed at that stage would define the way forward, said Muller.

There was also a unique twist and possible explanation for the bull’s apparent eagerness to attack the helicopter.

Each time an elephant undergoes a medical procedure where sedation is involved, it is microchipped and it turned out the angry bull had previous experience of being buzzed, darted and undergoing a probably undignified medical procedure.

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