Baby elephant cries for help after being stuck

A mother’s most natural instinct is to run until she hears her baby cry for help.

So, when baby elephant Omysha got stuck belly-up and cried at Zurich Zoo, that’s exactly what its mother, Indi, did.

In adorable scenes captured on tourists’ mobile phones, a six-week-old calf, called ‘smile’ in Hindi, is seen trying to climb over a ridge in her enclosure.

But she soon discovers she has no strength left when standing on the edge before tumbling down onto her back.

Unable to correct herself, she cried out for help that could melt the stoniest of human hearts.

And immediately, her mother, Indi, and another female relative burst into a cloud of dust to pull the brave baby back to her feet.

Using a combination of trunk and tusk, the Asian elephants lifted her up as the anxious crowd looked on.

Born on June 17 this year, Omysha is the youngest elephant at Zurich Zoo.

She is the third child of Indi, a 28-year-old elephant born in Burma who being transferred to Zurich zoo in 1999.

Omysha’s father is Maxi, a 44-year-old bull from Thailand.

The curator at the zoo said: ‘She didn’t know what to do with her trunk at first. I had a feeling that there would soon be a knot in it.

‘She spends a lot of time with her mother and the aunts who watch over her – once she tried to go swimming and they have to fish her out.’

Elephants are known to have close relationships with herd members outside of their immediate family.

Mothers and their children have a special bond, but adults are known to always watch out for children that aren’t theirs.

Other clan members can act as babysitters – an activity that helps young female elephants prepare for motherhood.

Asian elephants like Omysha are an endangered species with wild populations between 40,000 and 50,000, the Zurich Zoo said.