Published: 9:30AM BST 16 Aug 2009
The 48-year-old pachyderm was measured up at an elephant hospital in Thailand on Saturday.Experts are making a cast of her injured left front leg for a plastic prosthetic limb which will be attached on Sunday.
The elephant has been walking with the help of a temporary artificial leg made of canvas.
A much younger elephant at the same hospital already has a false leg.
Motola was injured in 1999 while working at a logging camp on the Thai-Burmese border.
Her mangled foot was amputated, and she hobbled on three feet until fitted with a temporary, canvas shoe-like device two years later.
She and a three-year-old elephant, Mosha, have both been cared for at an elephant hospital run by the Friends of the Asian Elephant (FAE).
Mosha lost part of her right front leg as a seven-month-old. Because she is growing fast, she has already outgrown three of her prosthetic limbs.
Both elephants have been cared for at the Elephant Hospital, set up by the FAE in 1993. The world's first such facility, the hospital has treated thousands of elephants for ailments ranging from eye infection to gunshot wounds.
Motola's initial operation used enough anesthetic to floor 70 people — a record noted in the 2000 Guinness Book of World Records.
Soraida Salwala, secretary general of the FAE, said: "It has been 10 years now, but in all these long years Motola enjoyed a happy life, walking out of her shelter for a sun bath."
The artificial leg has been constructed by the Prostheses Foundation, which also makes cheap but effective artificial limbs for human amputees.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/thailand/6035526/Motola-the-elephant-is-fitted-with-artificial-leg.html
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