Auckland Zoo's Andrew Coers gets to know Anjalee at the elephant orphanage in Sri Lanka.
Anjalee the elephant is en route to Auckland where she will join the zoo's 32-year-old resident elephant Burma.
The 8-year-old Asian elephant is the first of two elephants that will be coming to Auckland from Sri Lanka's Pinnawala Elephant Orphanage via a 12-hour flight on an Emirates freighter plane.
Follow Anjalee's journey to Niue, where she will be quarantined for a 90-day period, in photos:
Auckland Zoo director Jonathan Wilcken said Anjalee was a lovely elephant.
He said it had been an enormously complex undertaking to get Anjalee to Auckland and zoo staff have been working with Pinnawala staff for the past six months to begin transitioning the large mammal.
The offenders took off in a stolen vehicle with cigarettes, cash and other items.