A “sudden death”. In a press release published on Saturdaythe Baby and Nepal association expressed its “tremendous sadness” to announce the death of Baby, who had left to join his girlfriend Nepal, who died five years earlier.
In 2012, the two elephants, then residents of the zoo in Lyon’s Tête d’Or park, made headlines, despite themselves. The city, to which the Pinder circus had entrusted the custody of its pachyderms, had decided to euthanize them, claiming that they were carriers of tuberculosis and therefore potentially highly contagious. The affair became national, a request for presidential pardon having even been addressed, at the time, to François Hollande.
Negative serological tests
Moved by the fate reserved for them, Princess Stéphanie of Monaco came to pick them up in a truck in 2013 to drive them to the Rock so that they could enjoy a peaceful retirement within the domain of Fonbonne. In the meantime, the administrative court had quashed the euthanasia order taken by the Rhône prefecture, considering that the tests carried out on the two pachyderms were not conclusive.
Transferred to the hinterland of Nice, the two elephants had since found a second youth. The new serological tests carried out after their arrival confirmed that none of them had tuberculosis.
Nepal died in 2018 of kidney failure, aged 50. Baby was 56 years old.