The wild tube always brings the best of unedited wildlife footage of Sri Lankan elephants in the wild. The video today is on an elephant that is sick and is having a monstrous foot. The story behind the foot is not a very pleasant one. This giant had escaped an attempted capture by a group of poaches. However, he had left with several wounds. The worst one is on the left foot, where it has significantly deformed the foot's appearance. The puncture wounds appear to be gun-shot injuries, and these shots had caused the foot to appear swollen.
When injured with wounds such as gun-shot wounds occur, there will be deep wounds along with the bullet, which acts as a foreign body that causes continuous irritation. This will provoke a massive inflammatory response from the body, and the first steps are taken towards healing the wound. However, the wound healing process faces many challenges in the wild. The most common challenge is complicating infections. During the injury, the body's protective barrier, the skin breaks, facilitating the entry to various bacteria. The jungle is no sterile place and is not only rich in birds and mammals but also microbiota. These microorganisms can infect the wound and complicate the process by preventing healing. Suppose these microbes get spilled into the blood. In that case, they can travel through the body and even attack the animal's vital organs, resulting in fatal consequences. Therefore, the body defense system tries to hold these bacteria off by forming an abscess.
If you have ever got an abscess formed in you, you will know how painful it is. Imagine having an abscess as big as in this elephant? An abscess consists of pus formed as a result of the battle between the infection and the body. This animal has pus oozing out from the abscess. Even though the body tries to defend against the entry of infecting bacteria, sometimes it fails. This will pave access to the bacteria and can result in a fatal septicemic condition. Therefore, these wildlife officers and their veterinary team's attempt is to treat the abscess and provide drugs. To treat the abscess, they should reach the elephant, and therefore, proper restraining is essential. This team tried using a sedative to calm the elephant. Still, these drugs cannot be used in large doses as anesthesia and sedation even can cause severe complications or death in animals with impaired health status. However, they do dart the elephant with mild sedatives doses as there is no other option available. As that would make the animal somewhat docile. The crew is planning on other restraining methods as mild sedatives alone cannot do the task. Probably they might use ropes to tie, but the elephant has only three proper weight-bearing limbs.
We will see how an abscess of an elephant is treated in the wild from another video..
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