Even Google has celebrated the legend of Ahmed, the glorious elephant considered to be the most imposing 'Big Tusker', i.e. the specimen with the largest tusks, ever to have existed in Kenya. A legend that as such cannot be certain of truth, but which over time has been cloaked in anecdotes and testimonies and whose 50th anniversary of his death will fall in a few months' time.

Ahmed, already great when Kenya achieved independence, was known in the Samburu region as 'The King of Marsabit'. He lived in fact in the national reserve of the same name, at the foot of a large mountain surrounded by a large forest. Early accounts of the 'Big Tusker' tell us that he was already bigger and bulkier than his peers at a young age, and that he was always backed by two other pachyderms, smaller but older than him, as if they wanted to protect his enormous ivory heritage. But Ahmed, as he was nicknamed by the local community, apparently in memory of a local chief who was also very imposing, was also famous because it was said that his tusks were so big and long that he could climb the hills and the mountain of Marsabit only by walking backwards.

According to early writers in the early 1970s, his tusks weighed at least a quintal each. Ahmed achieved great popularity in those years thanks to three films: the ABC series 'The American Sportsman', the documentary 'The Search for Ahmed' and a French production about the work of the famous conservationist Iain Douglas-Hamilton, an elephant expert who followed him for some time. 
From here, a group of local students wrote an open letter to the then president and 'father of the fatherland' Jomo Kenyatta, asking him to protect the 'national heritage' that many researchers, as well as tourists and animal lovers, came to search for, also fuelling tourism in Samburu.
Kenyatta put Ahmed under his protection with a presidential decree, an unprecedented event in the country's history. The 'King of Marsabit' became the first and only elephant to be declared a 'living national monument'. 

The Big Tusker was guarded day and night by two armed rangers, who provided security and surveillance against poachers, who might have been attracted by the possible profits from his ivory tusks. 
However, in more than adulthood, Ahmed, despite having reduced his range, continued to roam the woods and glades of the Marsabit reserve, but always returned to his favourite waterhole and his keepers. Until, one morning in early 1974, after waiting in vain for Ahmed to reappear from the thicket where he usually took shelter in the night, his personal bodyguards decided to go looking for him. Eventually they found him, but it was too late, he had gone peacefully. He was not even lying on his side, but resting quietly on a large tree, as if he were sleeping, his fangs planted on the ground partially supporting him. At 55, Ahmed had waved like a true monarch of his species. Kenyatta arranged for Ahmed's remains to be reproduced on an original scale and for the large specimen to be preserved and displayed at the National Museum in Nairobi, so that Kenyans and foreign visitors could admire this giant of nature. There it still stands today.