The Elephant Surprise

A visit to the Natural History Museum in Maputo filled me with surprise. The taxidermist must have been perpetually drunk, given the state of some of the mounting- but that said, on the ground floor was a stuffed safari! Lions hunting down zebras, water buffalo at war with each other, elephants calling out to their young, crocodiles on the prowl, hippos doing whatever hippos do, impalas looking at risk. What came as the biggest surprise however were the 14 elephant embryos preserved in formaldehyde. There are the result a mass elephant hunt, apparently done to make room for Maputo.

Elephant embryos, both strange and beautiful, and something I never thought I would ever see.