Elephant Who Lost Leg To Land Mine Gets Life-Saving Prosthetic Limb

Someone needed to address the elephant in the room. Mosha, an Asian elephant who lost her right foreleg at just 7 months old when she stepped on a land mine on Thailand's border with Myanmar got her ninth prosthetic limb on June 29, which ended up saving her life. "The way she walked was unbalanced and her spine was going to bend," Dr. Therdchai Jivacate, the orthopedist surgeon who designed the artificial leg, told Reuters. Jivacate made Mosha her first prosthetic leg six years ago when he met her at Friends of the Asian Elephant Foundation when the majestic mammal was 2 and a half. Back then, Mosha weighed 1,300 pounds, now she weighs 4,000 and her artificial legs need to be redesigned to keep up with her growing body.