Saint-Saëns' The Carnival of the Animals

A year or two ago, I thought I found a phrase in Mozart's Symphony No. 40 in G minor, KV 550 that sounded similar to a phrase in Saint-Saëns' The Carnival of the Animals.  Recently, because it was in the CMQ, I listened to that Mozart symphony and remembered this possible connection that I'd never followed up on.  So I looked up the notation for both pieces and found the specific phrases.

The viola phrase at the very beginning of the second movement of Mozart's symphony:

(click on the image to enlarge it)

(notation found here)

The first contrabass phrase in Saint-Saëns' "The Elephant":

(notation found here)

Both start with an ascending fourth from Bb to Eb, and then that Eb is repeated.  Near the end of both phrases, there's a three-note section where the middle note is lower than the outer two (a whole step in Mozart's symphony, but a half step in "The Elephant").

Apparently Saint-Saëns was familiar with Mozart's work, so I'm assuming that he would have known Symphony No. 40, but I'm not sure if it inspired that phrase in "The Elephant."  There's certainly a similarity between them, but I'm still hesitant to assert anything about classical music because I don't know very much about it.