Baby Elephants Fend Off Myanmar Cold Spell With Homemade Blankets

When a group of baby elephants needed warmth during a cold front in Southeast Asia last week, they bundled up in donated crochet and knitted blankets.

Save Elephant Foundation was in need of provisions after an unusual bout of cold weather rolled into the area, threatening the youngest of its herd. The cold front came in from China and brought dangerously low temperatures to the Winga Baw elephant sanctuary in Myanmar. Thankfully, Blankets For Baby Rhinos, a “wildlife conservation craft group,” was prepared. 

Save Elephants Foundation thanked the organization for the “beautiful knitting blankets” in a Facebook post on Friday.

Save Elephants Foundation, based in Thailand and with centers in Myanmar and Cambodia, is an organization that rescues and houses elephants as a part of its mission to save them from extinction. Sangdeaun Lek Chailert, the organization’s founder, told The New York Times these were the coldest temperatures the region has seen in 40 years.

“We are doing our best to keep all of our animals warm, with fires being kept through the night,” Save Elephants Foundation wrote on Facebook.

Blankets For Baby Rhinos was founded last year by Sue Brown and Ella Best to create handmade blankets to help animals during freezing winter months. The group consists of 1,500 knitters and crocheters scattered around the globe, including the United States, Canada, Australia, and Europe, according to The New York Times. 

Chailert told the Times that the elephants appeared to appreciate the blankets.

“All seven babies, they loved it.”