"I ran to my team, the elephant team, and told them the news," she recalls. "I was very, very happy, and the first people I go to tell is the team who did all the work. It's been years in the making, but we're very thrilled."
Davis is the curator of large mammals at the Denver Zoo, and her team collects semen from the "bachelor herd" of which Jake is a part, then ships it to other zoos. With only 40,000 Asian elephants left worldwide and their population in decline, many zoos are focused on saving the critically endangered species from extinction; the Denver Zoo has been at the forefront of the efforts.
"A lot of work has gone into getting to the point where we're able to even just supply samples for other institutions," Davis says. "A lot of things really have to align in order for it to result in a pregnancy, and for it to happen for us after all the work we put in, we're super excited."
Jake's reaction hasn't been as effusive. "We didn't do anything formal, but when we feed Jake now or when we're working with him, we call him 'papa' or say "You're going to be a daddy,'" Davis admits. "As long as we have food, he seems to be in a pretty good mood about it."
After 53-year-old Mimi, a popular Asian elephant at the Denver Zoo, died in 2012, the institution focused on housing a bachelor herd whose semen could be collected and shared with other members of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, an international network.
"More baby elephants is just leaning into those goals we have with the AZA and the [Species Survival Plan] to really make sure the species doesn't go extinct," Davis says. "Our team knows that this is something that we're relied on in the community for. This is our purpose for having all males, so that's why it's been a priority for us."
Jake's baby mama is Jade, a seventeen-year-old Asian elephant at the St. Louis Zoo. She's one of seven elephants there and lives with her sisters, Maliha and Priya, her grandmother Ellie, two other female elephants and her father, Raja, the first Asian elephant born in the St. Louis Zoo.
Davis and her team got a call from the St. Louis Zoo at the beginning of the year; it wanted to order a batch of semen for the week of Valentine's Day, because Jade would be ovulating then.
Davis and her team worked three days in a row to get the best semen samples from their four bull elephants trained for rectal palpations, which involves putting an arm elbow deep into the rectum, then massaging the prostate until the animal ejaculates.
Jake came up with the healthiest sample of sperm, so Davis and her team selected his DNA to be sent to St. Louis. The day it was collected, the sample was shipped on a direct Southwest Cargo flight; Jade was inseminated that afternoon.
In July, Davis reached out to the St. Louis Zoo and learned that Jade was pregnant. Since elephant pregnancies last about 22 months, the St. Louis Zoo waited until December to announce the pregnancy; Jade has about a year left to go, and the St. Louis facility will wait to announce the baby's sex and name until after the birth. In the meantime, Jade's father, Raja, will be moving to Columbus, Ohio, to start another family and do his part to preserve the species.
In 2009, Jake was the first elephant born via artificial insemination in Canada. He came to the Denver Zoo in 2018 as it was gearing up its semen program. His father, Rex, lives in Oklahoma, and is also the father of Chuck, another member of Denver's bachelor herd. His mother, Natasha, still lives in Ontario, at the African Lion Safari.
Although Davis and her team collect samples throughout the week, only a few orders for semen come in each year, when appropriate female elephants are coming into estrus. The Denver Zoo has sent out about 25 samples over the past four years, and Jake's baby marks only the second instance in which a female elephant has been impregnated with Denver sperm.
The Houston Zoo announced the first pregnancy resulting from the Denver Zoo's semen samples in 2020. That pregnancy came out of the first semen sample the zoo had collected — Bodhi, another member of the bachelor herd, was the father — and led to the birth of Winnie.
Because Winnie shares a lot of Bodhi's characteristics, Davis predicts that Jake's offspring won't fall far from the tree, either, and will probably inherit his "calm demeanor" and "cute" looks.
"I hope it looks and acts like Jake," Davis says. "He's just a very mellow guy, and we lovingly refer to him as the cutest one. He's a really great animal, so hopefully a lot of that is replicated in his offspring."
