Your morning adorable: Asian elephant calf Jamuna Toni gets a bath at Munich's Hellabrunn Zoo

Jamuna Toni, the Asian elephant calf born just before Christmas at Munich, Germany's Hellabrunn Zoo, just keeps getting cuter as she gets older. (That's saying quite a lot, because she was a pretty darn adorable 2-day-old.)

According to the zoo, Jamuna Toni is already "a very intelligent and nosy calf" who keeps her mother, Panang, awfully busy. To give Panang the chance to rest, keepers pitch in to help care for the calf, bottle-feeding her, bathing her and even (as evidenced in a photo you'll see after the jump) supervising her while she plays in sawdust!

Since Panang had experienced difficulty with earlier pregnancies, keepers didn't take any chances with her most recent one. To help her prepare for Jamuna Toni's birth, they taught her to do maternity exercises that looked remarkably like elephant yoga. Panang practiced the exercises regularly during the final stretch of her two-year pregnancy.

More photos of Jamuna Toni after the jump!

RELATED:
The Year in Cute: 2009's 20 most adorable animals
Your morning adorable: Asian elephant calf goes for a swim at Australia's Taronga Zoo

-- Lindsay Barnett

Don't miss a single adorable animal: Follow Unleashed on Facebook and Twitter.

Photos: Steffi Loos / AFP/Getty Images

Comments

[Deborah]

This baby was rejected by her mother. Panang does not need to rest because the zoo is hand-rearing the calf. She is totally bottle fed and does not interact with her mother at all.

[Lindsay Barnett, L.A. Times]

Hi Deborah, where did you read that Jamuna Toni was rejected by her mother? I'd be very interested to learn your source for that info, if you don't mind sharing, and I'll happily correct this post if it's true that the calf is being raised exclusively by keepers.

My understanding is that she was taken from her mother for a few days shortly after her birth because zoo staff worried she'd be accidentally trampled by her (first-time) mother, but that she has since been reunited with her mother.

Thanks for your input!