A female elephant who was moved from the Philadelphia Zoo more than two years ago has been reunited with her former mate at the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo in Ohio.
Kallie, a 29-year-old African elephant, was moved to the International Conservation Center run by Pittsburgh Zoo & PPG Aquarium in Somerset County when the Philadelphia Zoo announced it was closing its elephant enclosure in July 2009.
Kallie was moved to Cleveland on Tuesday, where three elephants she spent time with at Walt Disney's Animal Kingdom near Orlando, Fla. are now kept.
One of them, Willy, was Kallie's male companion for 15 years. They two haven't seen one another since 1998. Geoff Hall, general curator of the Cleveland zoo, says elephants really do have good memories and it would not be unusual for the animals to remember one another.
AP CORRECTION: In a Nov. 3 story about an elephant being moved from Pennsylvania to Ohio, The Associated Press incorrectly reported where the animal had been held previously. It was held at Jumbo Lair, a private zoo in Ocala, Fla., not at Walt Disney's Animal Kingdom near Orlando. In addition, the story said the elephant, Kallie, had been held with her mate at Animal Kingdom. The mate was held there, but not until after Kallie had been moved.
