You may have heard of the Rosemond Gifford Zoo’s extremely rare twin elephants, Yaad and Tukada. But you may not know about the crew who brought them into the world.

“It was really kind of a little bit of shock and surprise, and then doing everything I could do to help the calf,” said Rebecca Eddy, a clinical instructor at Cornell University.

While every day may be different, October 24 would have been a remarkable day at any zoo in the world. Eddy was part of the team that delivered Yaad and Tukada to mother Mali, a delivery so rare that it had never previously been successfully performed in the United States.

“The first calf looked good, he got up well, so then after that we’re waiting for the placenta to be passed from Mali,” she said.

She says it was at that point that the team tasked with delivering what they thought was one baby elephant realized they were in for a massive surprise.

“We started to see that we thought the placenta being passed, then the second calf came out; my role at that point was to make sure that I could get in and help the calf,” Eddy said.

Eddy says it took a well-trained team to ensure that the procedure was done properly, and collection manager Seth Groesbeck and general curater Daniel Meates were a critical part of that process.

“The team said ‘that’s not a placenta; that’s an elephant,’ and we kind of all jumped in to what we were all trained to do and make sure that that calf was successful as well,” Groesbeck said.

Meates says the team wasn’t prepared for twins, in part, because of the way elephant ultrasounds are taken.

“You don’t get to see the whole baby, so the best way to explain it is when we do an ultrasound in an elephant, you might see your foot, you might see a rib; you don’t get to see the whole baby due to the fact that the ultrasound cannot process that giant image,” he said.

Eddy showed one taken on September 14, a month and 10 days before the birth. It only shows a spinal cord.

Eddy says both are now doing well, and the staff’s attention has turned to ensuring that the elephants are safe and healthy.

“They’re very active and appear to be healthy,” she said. “So hopefully a positive future for them, and certainly as they continue to grow and we monitor them closely, we’ll continue to make sure that they’re thriving.”