Your morning adorable: Young African elephants celebrate their birthdays at the Pittsburgh Zoo

Zuri, left, and Angeline are two young African elephants who celebrated their first birthdays Thursday at the Pittsburgh Zoo.  (Zuri and Angeline are half-siblings who share a father but have different mothers; Angeline was born July 9, 2008, and Zuri was born July 25, 2008. When it came to celebrating their birthdays, though, the zoo decided to split the difference and threw a combined party for both.)

Now that they're a year old (well, Zuri is technically almost a year old), the two youngsters are "eating solid foods, using their trunks to pick up objects and learning simple commands such as "come here and stop," Willie Theison, the zoo's elephant manager, told WPXI News. They've also nearly quadrupled their weight in their first year; Angeline weighed 284 pounds at birth and now weighs almost half a ton. Zuri weighed 247 pounds at birth and now weighs nearly 900.

Upon seeing these photos, we were somewhat curious about where one gets a cake fit for an elephant.  The answer, oddly, is simpler than we would have thought: Dairy Queen.  See another photo of the birthday pachyderms with Angeline's mother, Savannah, after the jump!

-- Lindsay Barnett

Photos: Gene J. Puskar / Associated Press

Comments

[clm]

Would love to read an update on how Kalle and Bette are doing at the Pittsburgh ICC.

[Eric]

My kids and I loved the zoo. Thought I would pass on the savings, if you go to http://zoocoupons.org you can usually find a coupon to save money on admission. Have fun! :)