Did You Know?

An elephant’s trunk has approximately 100,000 individual muscles. It can take an elephant calf a whole year to learn how to use it.

Lucha is a 33-year-old female Asian elephant who was born in Myanmar. She now lives with nine other elephants at the ZSL Whipsnade Zoo, England’s largest zoo. Recently, her zookeepers noticed that Lucha had lost her appetite and was losing weight. Was she seriously ill? They took a look inside her mouth and saw that one of her teeth had gone bad and was causing her toothache. What do you do when an elephant has toothache?

Thankfully for Lucha, help was at hand. Dr Peter Kertesz is a dental surgeon in London. From Monday to Thursday he treats human patients. For the rest of the time, he travels the world with his dental nurse treating animals’ teeth.

Treating such a large animal as Lucha presents many problems. Fortunately, the elephants at Whipsnade Zoo are very well trained. They will open their mouths on command, and will also lie down when told to do so. Dr Kertesz first took a look inside Lucha’s mouth to confirm that one of her teeth was infected. He decided that the huge tooth – an upper left molar – should be extracted.

Lucha was commanded to lie down and an anaesthetic put her to sleep. Dr Kertesz could see that the tooth had gone bad, but had not been able to drop out as it was supposed to. He used a builder’s drill to make small holes in the infected tooth and was then able to extract it. The whole operation took two hours.

Since the operation, Lucha has regained her appetite and is now putting on weight. She is now back with the other elephants and enjoying her life.

Watch Lucha visit the dentist:

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