A young female elephant named Kibali from the Vienna Zoo in Austria has unexpectedly died of heart failure one week before her second birthday.

Tiergarten Schonbrunn Zoo in the Austrian capital Vienna announced the death of its young female elephant Kibali on 10th July.

Shocked zoo officials reported that the young one was feeling well and did not show any symptoms of illness before.

However, detailed vet examinations showed that young Kibali died of heart failure.

Spokesperson Johanna Bukovsky told Newsflash: “Next week we would have celebrated Kibali’s second birthday. And now this stroke of fate happened. We can’t believe that she [Kibali] is no longer here.”

The woman added: “It was very important to us that the little one’s mother, Numbi, could say goodbye to her young child in peace, followed by the rest of the herd. Numbi is now getting a lot of attention from her carers.”

Kibali belonged to the African elephant (Loxodonta) genus whose population in Africa has massively decreased in the last few decades due to poaching and habitat loss.

African elephants are listed as ‘critically endangered’ by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species.

Kibali weighed around 90 kilogrammes (198 lbs) when she was born on 13th July 2019, and reached 550 kilogrammes (1,212 lbs) one week before her birthday.

The young one, conceived through artificial insemination, was the third offspring of her mum Numbi and had two siblings named Tuluba and Kibo.

Little Kibali, whose name was chosen through fans’ suggestions, had never met her father who lives in the South African wilderness.

Like humans, elephants are not immune to heart diseases, as well as arthritis and infertility.