This is the adorable moment an elephant reunites with her daughter in a German zoo after 12 years of separation as well as meeting her granddaughters for the first time.
The 39-year-old bull elephant named Pori touched trunks with her daughter Tana, 19, and granddaughters Tamika, 4, and Elani, 1 on Monday at the Bergzoo in Halle.
In the wild, female bull elephants tend to remain with their mothers for life.
The reunion of the family comes as part of a programme to slowly recreate this natural process in herds being held in captivity.
Pori was moved from her former home in Berlin to the Bergzoo in the eastern city of Halle, where she was reunited with her 19-year-old daughter Tana after years apart.
The family could be seen touching trunks through their cages before meeting in an outdoor complex of the elephant house for the morning.
The zoo's director Dr Dennis Müller said in a Facebook statement: "Pori's arrival in Halle is an important step in modern elephant keeping."
"In the future, as far as possible, all elephant herds in European zoos will be maintained in such natural family structures. We got a big step closer to this goal today."
The zoo also described the preparations and "great excitement" of reintroducing the elephants.
They said that the meeting did not only go without any complications but was "a visible joyful event for the four".
"The people involved were able to watch touching scenes between the granddaughters Tamika and Elani and their grandmother Pori, in which Babyfant Elani even tried to drink from Pori's eyes," the zoo said.
"We are proud to be the only zoo in Germany where only African elephant cows of a single mother line live together."
