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Congrats! She's adorable! Congratulations are in order: The newest addition at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park is a 281-pound baby elephant — and it’s a girl! The unnamed female calf was born on Sept. 26 to Umngani, a 28-year-old elephant at the zoo. Umngani has given birth three other times, but her newest daughter is the biggest elephant to be born at the park. Calves usually weigh between 200 and 268 pounds at birth and so the new addition is quite large — even for a baby elephant! “Knowing Umngani’s birth window was between Sept. 12 and Oct. 18, we had been placing her in a small area of the yard at night, separate from the rest of the herd,” Curtis Lehman, animal care supervisor at the Safari Park, said in a statement. “She has given birth three other times, and those calv...

You’d think elephants would be getting cancer left and right: They are giants of the animal kingdom and have trillions more cells than humans — cells that, in theory, could turn into cancer over their decades-long lifespans. But you’d be wrong. It’s not that they never get cancer, but less than 5 percent of elephants die from it, versus up to 25 percent of humans. “Because of their body size and how many cells they have and how long they live, they should all be developing cancer,” said pediatric oncologist Dr. Joshua Schiffman, professor of pediatrics at University of Utah and an investigator at Huntsman Cancer Institute. Getty Images | Cameron Spencer Researchers like Schiffman study animals that have evolved ways to “naturally resist cancer” despite their largeness and l...

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San Diego Welcomes Biggest-Ever Elephant Calf Born At The Zoo

Elephants Rarely Get Cancer—here’s Why That Matters To Humans