The "miracle" elephant known as Mr Shuffles who critically injured a Taronga Park zoo keeper on Friday may have been testing her authority, a veterinary behaviourist says.
Senior elephant keeper Lucy Melo was in the elephant barn at the Sydney zoo when the two-year-old Asian elephant calf - who weighed more than 500kg at his first birthday - "challenged" her and pinned her against the bollard just before 11.30am (AEDT) on Friday.
She had been engaged in a routine training session teaching the elephants how to wash.
Ms Melo was still conscious and talking when paramedics first arrived but lapsed into unconsciousness and had a cardiac arrest for about five minutes.
On Friday night, Taronga Park said Ms Melo remained in a critical but stable condition at Royal North Shore hospital.
Jacqui Ley, from the Sydney Animal Behaviour Service, said Mr Shuffles may have have been testing Ms Melo's authority - a behaviour typical of adolescent animals.
"He may have been testing her in the same way that youngsters test those in authority, pushing her to see if she got cross," Dr Ley told AAP.
"Young male animals of any species play more boisterously than females and there's commonly more challenging involved, wrestling, and tests of strength.
"So he was probably just being a young male animal, the problem is that he weighs a tonne and she weighs 50 or 60 kilograms."
The zoo said on Friday that it didn't know why the elephant challenged Ms Melo, who was part of the team that went to Thailand to bring the Taronga's five Asian elephants to Sydney.
Mr Shuffles was named Pathi Harn - the Thai word for miracle - because of his survival of a difficult birth.
He was then named Mr Shuffles because his early attempts at walking resembled the shuffle of an elderly man in slippers.
Dr Ley said it was important for the public not to judge Mr Shuffles because he would not have meant to hurt Ms Melo.
"The safest interpretation is that he was just being a young male," Dr Ley said.
"The thing we have to be careful about is not making moral judgments on this animal, in the same way we wouldn't make moral judgments on a two-year-old who has done something terrible."
