
Disney’s animated original movie and live-action remake of Dumbo both have happy endings for their hero elephant.
But the real-life elephant the beloved big-eared mammal was based on wasn’t so fortunate.
After watching his mother killed in front of his eyes, years of being drugged with alcohol and subjected to stress, Jumbo the Elephant was killed by a train at just 24 years old.

It was a tragic end to a sad life that was largely unknown by the public, until a 2017 David Attenborough documentary uncovered the truth about Jumbo's story.
In Attenborough and the Giant Elephant, the 92-year-old naturalist and his team use Jumbo's skeleton, as well as historical records to piece together Jumbo's life and death.
A sad start
Jumbo was born in Sudan, Africa in 1860. As a calf, his mother was captured by ivory hunters and slaughtered in front of him. A short time later, he was sold to a Paris zoo.
In 1865 he was transferred to London Zoo, where he was given the name Jumbo. And not because he was big - in fact, "jumbo" became a term for large because of the elephant.
Jumbo was famous for his size - his eventual owner, PT Barnum, claimed he was the largest elephant in the world and was 13 feet tall (almost four metres). In actual fact, Attenborough found, he was 10"6 (3.2m) at the time of his death - still about 2ft (60cm) taller than average.
He may have reached the height PT claimed if he hadn't died at such a young age for an elephant, which can live to about 70 years old.