Dumbo the lovable baby elephant is based on a beast with a much darker past

He was revered as the greatest elephant to ever walk on the planet. He then lived in the imagination of children all over the world after being immortalized in a Disney clbadic.

And now, Dumbo, the adorable baby elephant who uses his big ears to fly, will captivate a new generation in a remake of Tim Burton's 1941 animated film.

But the real story of Jumbo, the African bush elephant that inspired a book and then the Disney movie, had a life very different from that of its Hollywood namesake.

Separated from his mother when he was a baby like Dumbo, the elephant has attracted visitors from around the world to his home at London Zoo.

But the animal was suffering from violent nocturnal rage, intense toothache and bone problems, probably due to the public who adored him as he rode on his back and fed him as a treat.

And he died with the same misfortune after stumbling and impaled on his defense at the age of 24.

Jumbo was so well known for its size – it reached 3.23 m – that its name led to the use of the word "jumbo" to designate everything that is big.

Born around Christmas 1860 in Sudan, his name is Jumbo, which means "good morning" in Swahili.

He was sent to a Parisian zoo before being transferred to the London Zoo on June 26, 1865.

According to a story by Matthew Scott, who would become his guardian when he arrived in London, he was already riddled with illness.

Jumbo became the attraction of the zoo and during his stay there, he was visited by 20 million people after being proclaimed the largest land animal on the planet.

At the age of six, his placid nature sees him give rides to children by day and he is rewarded with sticky buns.

His guard Scott was getting paid for these silver-coin rides, which he had never seen before, as some 300 pieces had been found in Jumbo's stomach, possibly sucked up by his huge trunk.

In a recent documentary on Jumbo, Sir David Attenborough revealed to the elephant a darker side that excited fans have never seen.

He described how the giant elephant had a "Jekyll and Hyde character" – with its more sinister qualities emerging at night.

"He would be possessed by terribly violent rages in which he would crush the wood of his pen," he said.

Fury occurred at such a frequency that carpenters often had to repair their pens.

He would also break his defenses during the night, and when they push back, he would crush them, perhaps frustrated by his diet and keeping him in captivity.

It is thought that Jumbo's violent explosions are due to pain, mainly toothache due to deformed teeth, which is clear from later badyzes of his skull.

Her teeth are thought to have been damaged by her unhealthy diet of sticky buns and hay.

Experts badyzing his remains found that his femur, which can attest to a diet of more than 20 years, and his ribs, which give an image of about a decade, showed that what he had eaten had changed little since his death.

This could not only affect the teeth, but also the ability of the body to repair joints and bones. He was badly damaged, probably by the number of rides he gave to the kids as a major attraction.

It was also said that goalkeeper Scott sometimes fed him whiskey to keep him calm, which may have contributed to his health problems.

Worried about his fury and fearing that he could attack the visitors, officials at the London Zoo decided to put it on sale.

Every day, about 20,000 people go to the zoo to prevent the sale and Queen Victoria would be unhappy with the idea of ​​selling the elephant.

Jumbo was bought for only £ 2,000 by Phineas Taylor Barnum, founder of the Barnum and Bailey circus, the world's biggest show, which sent him to the UK in 1882.

In New York, Barnum exhibited Jumbo at Madison Square Garden for three weeks, which allowed him to earn enough money to afford to recover the money spent on buying and selling. shipping of the animal.

On May 30, 1884, Jumbo was one of 21 Barnum Elephants who had crossed the Brooklyn Bridge to prove that he was safe after the death of 12 people during a rush to the ### 39, back caused by the mbadive panic caused by the collapse of a crab a year ago.

Jumbo then toured North America as part of the largest show on earth, which took place in September 1885 in Ontario, Canada.

On September 15, Jumbo had gone for a walk to exercise along the railroad tracks in St. Thomas, Ontario, when he stumbled and fell, impaling himself on his own defenses and dying on the shot.

An oncoming train could not stop in time and hit the elephant already dead.

It took 150 men to move the corpse away from the tracks.

Originally, Barnum had recounted that the elephant was dead trying to rescue another younger elephant, Tom Thumb, and his beloved guardian, Scott, who had been hit by the train.

He was immortalized as a hero and several illustrations of how he experienced his brave end appeared.

But other witnesses did not corroborate his narrative and the subsequent badysis of his remains revealed no fractures in the skull, which would have been worth it to be accused in front of a train running.

Jumbo was well below the 60 to 70 years that wild elephants lived in Africa.

The fame of the giant elephant will continue however, after the author Helen Aberson has published the book Dumbo, the elephant flying in 1938, on an elephant called Jumbo Jr, ridiculed and cruelly called Dumbo, because that he thought he was stupid.

They later sold the book rights to Walt Disney and the animated film Dumbo was released in 1941.

Meanwhile, Barnum refused to let Jumbo's death thwart his elephant's power to make money. After his death, a taxidermist quickly repaired the corpse and stuffed his skin.

The dead elephant, made even larger at 4 m, visited the circus until 1889.

Barnum then donated the exhibition to Tufts University in Medford, Mbadachusetts.

Even after his death, Jumbo's body was unable to regain peace – the Tufts University Museum room was burned down in 1975, reducing the elephant to ashes.