Little Elephant With Dwarfism Caught On Film For The First Time Ever

For the first time, an elephant with dwarfism has been filmed in the wild. And though he may be shorter than average, he's not to be trifled with: This Tyrion Lannister of the Sri Lankan jungle was caught on camera besting a much larger male in a display of dominance.

In an email to the Dodo, the director of the Uda Walawe Elephant Research Project, Shermin de Silva, Ph.D., wrote: "This is the only formally documented case of dwarfism so far in a wild elephant." As de Silva and her colleagues noted in a recent report in the journal BMC Research Notes, dwarfism is rarely seen in any species of wildlife, making this discovery all the more remarkable. (Typically, animals with dwarfism are at a defensive disadvantage, but there's no real predatory threat to an Asian elephant. Due to poaching and human activity, however, Sri Lanka's elephant population is 35 percent of the size it was in the early 1900s.)

Walawe Kota, on the right, faces off with a larger male.

The elephant, nicknamed Walawe Kota, appears to be at least 20 years old; in 2013, the scientists wrote in the report, Walawe Kota was seen with secretions on the sides of his head, signs of a male elephant's "period of heightened sexual activity and aggression" known as musth.

As an elephant with dwarfism, Walawe Kota is different from the so-called pygmy elephants of Borneo, de Silva said.

And his size works to his advantage "in the head-to-head combat of bull elephants," the scientists write, as he can throw "his bulk directly at an opponent, whereas a taller individual had to stoop down awkwardly and risk falling."

Walawe Kota throws his bulk under his opponent.

Asian elephants are not territorial, but they duke it out over female elephants. And here, too, Walawe Kota's stature may not be a disadvantage - female Asian elephants are smaller than the average male. De Silva and her colleagues did not see how the rumble ended, but the BBC notes that "two days later, they saw the Walawe Dwarf at the same location, resting under a tree with a group of females and calves."