Photos of an elephant with a synthetic leg in Thailand have gone viral on the internet. The elephant named Mosha is said to have stepped on a landmine sometime ago, losing her right leg in the process.
She was then left with a devastating defect. She struggled then to pull herself together in order to walk. It is said when the accident happened to Mosha, her weight was about 600Kg then.
As Mosha struggled to walk, she was discovered by the surgeon named Dr Therdchai Jivacate. Apart from being a surgeon, Dr Jivacate is also an inventor. He is a master of prosthetics, specializing in artificial legs. Over the course of his career, Jivacate is said to have made over 20,000 prosthetic legs for both animals and human beings. Animals such as dogs, cats and birds have all benefited from the expertise of Dr Jivacate.
With the help of veterinaries at the Friends of the Asian Elephant Foundation, Dr Jivacate decided to take on his biggest challenge ever in his career. Friends of the Asian Elephant Foundation runs a hospital that cares for injured elephants in the region.
Although Dr Jivacate had designed artificial legs in the past, those were not heavy. Considering the weight of Mosha, it will require an extraordinary skills and knowledge to come out with a perfect plan to make the huge animal walk normal again. That was the challenge Jivacate faced.
In a phone interview, Jivacate told the Mother Board: “When I saw Mosha, I noticed that she had to keep raising her trunk into the air in order to walk properly. At the time, she weighed around 600 kg and she was putting two thirds of her body weight onto her left foreleg, which was causing it to become bent”.
When finally Jivacate and his team of veterinary helpers began working on an artificial leg for Mosha, they had to rely on trial and error method before eventually getting the right artificial foreleg that Mosha could use with ease. Jivacate said the main challenges were posed by the design and the biomechanics, as the team had to build a comfortable socket that Mosha’s stump would slot into, as well as get the correct alignment between the socket and her foot so she could walk properly.
Jivacate explained: “We knew that she wouldn’t use the prosthetic leg if it caused her pain. At first, she was curious about what was attached to her stump and tried to remove the prosthetic with her trunk, but we’d secured it tightly”.
Finally, Jivacate and his team successfully made the prosthetic leg which weighed about 15kg for Mosha. The artificial leg was made from thermoplastic, steel, and elastomer. It took Mosha 12 hours to learn how to walk with the artificial leg when she first tried it. The team had to adjust the alignment of the socket and her artificial foot around five to six times until they struck an axis that afforded Mosha fluid movement.
The team revealed that in the past six years, Mosha has gone through nine different prosthetic forelegs in order to cope with her increasing weight and size. Currently, Mosha weighs about 2,000Kg.
Her weight has made the team taking care of the leg to be constantly monitoring her in order to improve on the artificial leg. The leg needs to be heavier and stronger, and Jivacate said that the team is still look for a perfect prosthetic with materials that were more durable and resistant to wear.
However, Dr Jivacate and his team at the Friends of the Asian Elephant Foundation are happy that they have at least been able to help Mosha walk normal like any other elephant.
“Mosha grows fast. In the first year, she went through three prosthetic legs. Animals don’t ask that we make legs for them, but we wanted to give Mosha one. I think she knows that I make her prosthetic legs as each time I come to the elephant hospital she makes a little salute by raising her trunk in the air”, Dr Jivacate added.
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