I’m not sure if you all have been following the explosion of news in the last week about elephants in zoos. The Seattle Times has published in the last week at least 3 articles on the ethics and politics of keeping elephants in zoos. Beginning with the article, “Elephants are Dying out in America’s Zoos” by Michael Berens, this series explores the dark side of zoos and, in particular, the way that elephants experience these spaces. Berens’ first article summarizes briefly the history of breeding elephants in zoos, starting in the 1960s. When the first elephants were born in zoos and the public exploded with excitement and support for the zoos with baby elephants, the industry saw an opportunity. Baby elephants (and baby animals in general) born at zoos make news headlines and attract hoards of visitors to the zoos. Couched in a discourse of conservation efforts to preserve the Asian and African elephants in captivity, zoos started breeding elephants willy nilly (or at least trying to). I remember when I was a kid, there was a baby elephant born at the Pittsburgh Zoo. We went numerous times to observe this beautiful, perfect creature without a thought for how that gorgeous baby elephant was made.
Elephants, like many animals, can become pregnant in one of two ways: either by a female and male engaging in intercourse or through artificial insemination. In the late 1980s/early 1990s, Seattle’s Woodland Park Zoo determined that they wanted to impregnate one of their female elephants—Chai. It was far too costly and inconvenient to transfer Chai to another zoo where she could mate with a virile male elephant, so zoo staff decided to artificially inseminate her. For two years, they practiced “mock inseminations” by short-chaining all four of her legs so she couldn’t move an inch. This was all in order to get her used to the procedure. For several years, zookeepers attempted artificial insemination 92 times without success. Finally, they shipped her to Missouri to mate with a bull. You can read all about the details in Berens’ article, but she returned pregnant and gave birth to Hansa in Seattle in 2000. Hansa died in 2007 of a fairly common and deadly elephant herpes virus. Chai has been artificially inseminated without success a total of 112 times.
Elephants die in zoos at a rate of two deaths for every birth, despite appalling efforts at breeding them through forced insemination. Zoos conceal this truth, argue that in fact elephants are thriving in zoos, and continue to promote the necessity of zoos as spaces of conservation, education, etc. But when it comes down to it, zoos are for-profit institutions. And the zoo industry is an industry—concerned with generating profit and running a successful business at the expense of the animals they hold captive. As the situation for elephants in zoos threatens to get worse and begins to reach the public eye, the industry or the Association for Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) works harder at discrediting critics.
For decades now, an activist group in Seattle—the Friends of the Elephants at Woodland Park Zoo—has protested and petitioned the zoo to release their remaining elephants to the The Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee. The sanctuary is 2700 acres in Tennessee and is home to a number of Asian and African elephants rescued from various zoos and other spaces within the entertainment industry. There, elephants have the ability to roam and live in a way that is closer to the way elephants like to live. But sanctuaries receive backlash from the zoo industry. In his second article, “Elephant Havens Face Zoo-Industry Backlash,” Michael Berens outlines the ways in which sanctuaries offer an alternative to zoos for captive elephants—an alternative that the zoo industry would like to deny exists. Quoting Berens:
“By their very nature, sanctuaries focus attention on a question the zoo industry doesn’t eagerly discuss. How much space do these social, most humanlike of mammals require to lead a healthy life? Industry guidelines are fuzzy on the issue.”
The zoo industry does not want to acknowledge that elephants and other animals may be happier elsewhere (in sanctuaries specifically designed to meet their needs).
But the zoo industry also lashes back in another way—at critics and animal rights groups dedicated to the release of the animals to sanctuaries. Danny Westneat writes in the Seattle Times this week, “Elephant ‘extremists’ in Seattle now feeling vindicated”. His article looks at Alyne Fortgang and Nancy Pennington, the women behind the Friends of Woodland Park Elephants. I have had the pleasure of meeting Alyne and Nancy and their passion for giving the elephants at Seattle’s zoo a better life is tremendous. As part of a greater trend to discredit animal rights activists and critics of animal use at large as ‘extremists’ or ‘terrorists,’ these women and other critics have been labelled ‘extremists’ by the zoo industry. I’m always so interested in the use of the term ‘extremist’ because it is usually set in stark contrast with the ‘reasonable,’ ‘rational’ status quo. But the only reason the status quo of keeping elephants in cramped conditions where they are artificially inseminated 112 times is not deemed ‘extreme’ is precisely because it is the status quo. I would consider their current conditions extreme, not those who question those conditions.
Those three articles are certainly worth a read and shed light on some of the realities of the lives of elephants in zoos. Hopefully, this will inspire change in the hearts and minds of the public when deciding whether to give these institutions of captivity our support and patronage.
Follow
I find the patronage of zoos to be a very troubling issue. I do believe that there are some benefits to zoos (for example, the Condor program at San Diego Wildlife Park), however, the majority of the work that zoos do is for-profit and to bring in money to see the exotic species and experience an animal that many people would not have the opportunity to see. A zoo is the epitome of imprisoning the ‘other’ for the tourist gaze and for putting the exotic on display. To cage an animal that is meant to roam vast spaces and forced to be impregnated over and over again is despicable! Perhaps we should be addressing why we have zoos in the first place and the root causes of our consumption of the exotic other.
This is something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately as well. I think some zoos do valuable conservation work–for example, the London Zoo does a lot of this, and about ten years ago they moved their elephants and rhinos to a different, much more spacious location outside London, where they have more room to roam around, so at least they seem to be thinking about the quality of these animals’ lives. Plus I think it can be so powerful to actually *see* animals that are in danger because of our disregard of the environment, or to see a boar in a zoo and think “hang on, why is this animal taken care of when millions of pigs are treated like disposable property?”
But that said, even the best zoos are fundamentally imprisoning their animals. And I worry that the more caring zoos normalise the idea of putting animals on display, which makes it easier for people to rationalise going to see zoos that don’t involve themselves in conservation efforts, or even those awful roadside “zoos” that literally are just animals in cages. So…I don’t know, it’s something that I keep turning over in my head.
Meghan, You’re totally right about the potential for more caring zoos to normalize the institution of captivity and exhibition. I think also it’s easy for people to just go along with the public discourse that zoos are necessary spaces of conservation without questioning if they are what they say they are and what this “conservation” means for the animals. There definitely seems to be significant variance in the quality of zoos and the treatment of animals in these spaces–but I think you make an important point that regardless of how they’re treated, they are still space of captivity and imprisonment. I don’t know that there is a clean, one size fits all answer or response to the problem of zoos, but it certainly is good to engage with questioning these practices and our choice to be patrons of zoos or not. 🙂
Rachel–Great point! Yes, we definitely should be addressing why we have zoos and what purpose they serve, particularly because of their direct historical lineage tied to imperialism and the capturing and exhibiting of the human ‘other’ as well. In many important ways, zoos have changed since those days, but in others they remain strikingly similar. Thanks for commenting! It’s great to hear your perspective!
I just love animals! And I just found out that Manila Zoo has a cute elephant named Mali, and she is the only elephant in the Philippines! She has lived there for almost all of her lives, for more than 30 years. The zoo should feel like her sweet and cozy home now. But then, I read some articles in PETAAsiaPacific.com, and I noticed that Mali is in fact sad and lonely! Look at her here: https://www.facebook.com/FreeMali. She is like a prisoner, who cannot spend her days with her friends, roam in vast territories, and have delicious adequate food! She even suffers from foot problems. Why does she deserve this? 🙁 Please Help Her!