No tourists, more time and privacy to "have sex," but that's not all.
This could be more or less the thought of Kenya's elephants that in this period of global lockdown and forced absence of visitors in East Africa's natural parks, are reproducing themselves with numbers never recorded before.
According to the Elephant Protection Initiative Foundation, 140 baby elephants have been born in Amboseli National Park alone since the beginning of the pandemic. Of course, one cannot relate the births to the beginning of the pandemic that has emptied the parks, since the elephants have a gestation of 22 months, but experts ensure that the peace of mind in carrying out a pregnancy also has a great impact on the births. And that in the coming months, however, there will be some good ones, in terms of increases.
"The increase in births - explains Winnie Kiru, director of the foundation - is due to at least two factors: the lack of tourists due to the restrictions put in place to contain the spread of Covid-19 and the abundance of rain during the wet season, which has made the vegetation grow in large quantities to allow the elephants to feed properly and carry on their pregnancies easily.
"The ability of a female elephant to conceive and carry out a pregnancy depends very much on her physical condition and diet," explained Amboseli Trust for Elephant director Cynthia Moss to the media.
Other animal species, not only in Amboseli, are also reproducing with pleasure, in the case of elephants the news is greeted with double enthusiasm because of the danger of the killing of pachyderms due to poaching. A few days ago, north of Tsavo Park, a gang was arrested hiding some tons of ivory, while in the north of the country a high school teacher was arrested trying to sell two elephant tusks bought by poachers to plainclothes policemen who had set a trap for him.