'A window into its soul': The rare elephant behaviour that reveals the depths of their emotions

The winner of the 2026 Wildlife Photographer of the Year captures a rarely seen elephant behaviour, revealing the complexity of their emotional lives.

Photographer Federico Veronesi witnessed a heartbreaking scene while following a herd of elephants trudging along a dry riverbed in the Namibian desert in September 2025.

He encountered a female elephant carrying a stillborn calf, its tiny legs wrapped around her trunk and its limp body dangling in the air. 

"It was an intimate moment, almost spiritual," Veronesi recalls. "The baby was still completely intact and soft. It hadn't stiffened up yet, so it was clearly born in the night, or maybe just a few hours before."

At first sight, the poignant scene appeared to show a mother's grief. But as Veronesi would later find out, the rare behaviour he was witnessing had a surprising twist that revealed an even more complex sensitivity than it first seemed.

Veronesi followed the herd for several hours and captured some incredibly striking photos, one of which (see the image below) won the grand title prize at the 2026 Wildlife Photographer of the Year, run by the Natural History Museum in London.

The female elephant carried the calf for hours, occasionally setting it down to feed or drink, before picking it up again and continuing her journey along the Huab River, Veronesi says. "I thought, 'This is such a sad scene but it needs to be seen by people.' This photo makes it clear how much these elephants suffer, how they have complex feelings, which people perhaps don't associate with animals."

Veronesi eventually found out that the elephant was not carrying her own stillborn calf. "She's not the mother," says Christin Winter, conservation programme director at Elephant Human Relations Aid (EHRA), a non-profit working to protect Namibia's desert elephants.

This female, now aged 14, lost her own calf two years ago. Since then, she has been seen carrying the stillborn calves of other elephants on four separate occasions, says Winter. It's the first time that this behaviour has been documented in the area, she adds.

This revelation "certainly adds another layer to the depth of these creatures' emotions", says Veronesi. "It's even more poignant how this female has been behaving like that after her loss, as if she is trying to reconnect with her own calf and still not giving up on that loss after many years."

There are a few theories as to why the elephant carried the calf for such a long time. The behaviour may be some kind of "emotional processing", Winter says.

"Perhaps it was a way [for her] to process the death and not being able to let go just yet, perhaps she was traumatised by losing her calf and that's why she snaps into this behaviour every time one........

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