- Tuesday, February 25, 2025
The skeleton and tusks of the elephant, which passed away in 1974, has been preserved at Nairobi National Museum.
By: Shubham Ghosh
GOOGLE Doodle on Wednesday (6) came up with a doodle celebrating the legendary ‘Ahmed the Elephant’ with illustrations of elephants and tourists and an elephant with huge tusks.
Ahmed was an elephant that was born in the forests in Mount Marsabit area of Kenya in 1919.
While not much is known about Ahmed’s early life, it became famous for its massive tusks by hikers in mountains in northern Kenya. The pachyderm soon gained worldwide recognition and came to be known as “The King of Marsabit”.
According to hikers who saw the elephant, its tusks were so large that they scraped the ground, making it unique among its peers. They were three metres long and weighed 67 kilograms each.
In later years, Ahmed was also covered by many television projects that included a series and documentary in 1970.
But there was also a threat to its life as elephants fell prey to poachers for their ivory. Schoolchildren wrote to Kenya’s first president Jomo Kenyatta asking for Ahmed’s protection and the latter placed the animal under his protection by a presidential decree. Two security personnel guarded the animal round the clock.
Ahmed died a natural death in 1974 at the age of 55 and its skeleton and tusks have been preserved at the Nairobi National Museum for the new generations to admire the giant.
