TRUE: Tim the Elephant, an iconic elephant from the Amboseli National Park, has died
KWS has confirmed that the elephant died of natural causes, and that its body would be preserved and put on display
A post shared on Facebook with an image claiming to show the tusks of Tim the Elephant from Amboseli is TRUE.
The image shows men in green overalls similar to those worn by the Kenya Wildlife Service, holding up two large elephant tusks.
KWS Corporate Communications Manager Paul Udoto, told PesaCheck that the tusks in the photo did indeed belong to Tim the Elephant, and they were removed in order for his body to undergo the process of taxidermification by the National Museum of Kenya in order to be put on display.
A postmortem on the elephant revealed that Tim died of a twisted gut, which is a natural cause of death for elephants.
Tim was 50 years old at the time of his death in the Amboseli National park, and he died on 4 February. Udoto confirmed that Tim’s tusks had been removed in order to allow for the process of taxidermification, where the elephant’s body would be preserved in an almost lifelike appearance.
Thereafter, the tusks will be reattached, and Tim will go on display at the National Museums of Kenya.
Born in 1969 to Trista (TD family) Tim grew to become one of Africa’s last ‘Tusker’ elephants whose ivory tusks are so long that they scrape the ground. Usually, only old bull elephants grow their tusks long enough to reach this acclaimed status. However, this phenomenon also makes the elephants vulnerable to poachers.
In 2014, Tim was treated for a spear wound in his ear after he was spotted limping in the park and in 2018, KWS rescued the elephant after he got stuck in Amboseli swamps at Kimana sanctuary.
Until the death of Tim the Elephant, KWS had a tracker on him to keep the community as well as the elephant safe by enabling the security teams to ward him off agricultural areas.
PesaCheck has looked into an image claiming to show men holding tusks of Tim the elephant and finds it to be TRUE.
This post is part of an ongoing series of PesaCheck fact-checks examining content marked as potential misinformation on Facebook and other social media platforms.
By partnering with Facebook and similar social media platforms, third-party fact-checking organisations like PesaCheck are helping to sort fact from fiction. We do this by giving the public deeper insight and context to posts they see in their social media feeds.
Have you spotted what you think is fake news or false information on Facebook? Here’s how you can report. And, here’s more information on PesaCheck’s methodology for fact-checking questionable content.
This fact-check was written by PesaCheck Fact-Checker Simon Muli and edited by PesaCheck Deputy Editor Ann Ngengere with research input from Mercy Karagi
The article was approved for publication by PesaCheck Managing Editor Eric Mugendi.
PesaCheck is East Africa’s first public finance fact-checking initiative. It was co-founded by Catherine Gicheru and Justin Arenstein, and is being incubated by the continent’s largest civic technology and data journalism accelerator: Code for Africa. It seeks to help the public separate fact from fiction in public pronouncements about the numbers that shape our world, with a special emphasis on pronouncements about public finances that shape government’s delivery of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) public services, such as healthcare, rural development and access to water / sanitation. PesaCheck also tests the accuracy of media reportage. To find out more about the project, visit pesacheck.org.
PesaCheck is a joint initiative of Code for Africa, through its innovateAFRICA fund, with additional funding support from the International Budget Partnership (Kenya) and Twaweza, in partnership with a coalition of local media organisations, and the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ).
