Captive elephants
s can be found in various captive facilities such as a zoo, sanctuary, circus, or camp, usually under veterinary supervision. They can be used for educational, entertainment, or work purposes.
The earliest evidence of captive elephants dates to the Indus Valley Civilization about 4,500 years ago. Since then, captive elephants have been used around the world in war, ceremony, and for labor and entertainment. Captive elephants have been kept in animal collections for at least 3,500 years. The first elephant arrived in North America in 1796. London Zoo, the first scientific zoo, housed elephants beginning in 1831.
Before the 1980s, zoos obtained their elephants by capturing them from the wild. Increased restrictions on the capture of wild elephants and dwindling wild populations caused zoos to turn to captive breeding. The first successful captive birth in North America of an Asian elephant occurred at Oregon Zoo in 1962, while the first African elephant captive birth occurred at Knoxville Zoological Gardens in 1978. Today, most zoos obtain their elephants primarily through breeding, though occasionally zoos will obtain elephants from semi-captive work camps in Asia or rescue elephants that would otherwise be culled in Africa. Without an increase in birth rates or an influx of wild elephants, practitioners fear that captive elephant populations could become non-viable within 50 years.
In 2006, 286 elephants were kept in American zoos. Nearly one in three Asian elephants lives in captivity—about 15,000 in total—mostly in work camps, temples, and ecotourism sites in the countries in which they naturally occur. The International Union for Conservation of Nature estimates the total population of Asian elephants in the wild is 40,000 to 50,000, and that of African elephants in the wild is 400,000 to 600,000.
History
Tame elephants have been recorded since the Indus Valley civilization around 2,000 BCE. With mahouts, they have been used as working animals in forestry, as war elephants, for cultural and ceremonial use, as a method of execution, for public displays such as circus elephants, in elephant polo and in zoological gardens.Image:Hanno.raffael.jpg|thumb|Sketch of Hanno, the pet white elephant of Pope Leo X, by Raphael, c.1514
The expression white elephant derives from a white elephant being considered sacred and therefore disqualified from useful work, yet posing a large ownership cost. The origin of the expression is from the story that the kings of Siam gave white elephants as a gift to courtiers they disliked, in order to ruin the recipient by the great expense incurred in maintaining the animal.
Behaviour and training
Elephants have the largest brains of all land animals, and ever since the time of Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, have been renowned for their cognitive skills, with behavioural patterns shared with humans. Pliny the Elder described the animal as being closest to a human in sensibilities. They also have a longer lifespan than most livestock. Elephants exhibit a wide variety of behaviors, including those associated with grief, learning, allomothering, mimicry, play, altruism, use of tools, compassion, cooperation, self-awareness, memory, vengeance, and language.In the wild, elephant herds usually consist of a matriarch who leads a stable group of related adult females and their young offspring. When male elephants reach maturity they disperse from the herds and live on their own or join groups called bachelor herds, where they associate with other males during the times of the year that they are not sexually active. When males are sexually active, they enter a state called musth, during which time they roam widely, searching for available females. During this time, they are extremely aggressive toward other males they encounter.
In captivity, providing elephants with a social structure that resembles their own natural lifestyle is difficult in part given that moving elephants between different facilities to mimic male dispersal or facilitate breeding is a logistically challenging task, but also because extreme aggression of adult male elephants while in musth poses a health and safety threat to keepers and other animal species, and, to a lesser degree, to other elephants.
Training
Elephants in captivity can be trained to perform a variety of tasks. Elephants can remember tone, melody, and words, allowing them to recognise more than 20 verbal commands.In Nepal, elephants are ridden by forest rangers to patrol national forests and for entertainment by tourists. In Myanmar, elephants assist in logging operations. In North America, Australasia, and Europe, elephants are primarily trained for circuses, where they may be trained to perform tricks for the entertainment of crowds, and in zoos, where they may be trained to participate in their own husbandry by, for example, presenting their feet for nail trims or opening their mouth for dental exams. The use of elephants in circuses is controversial; public outcry caused Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circuses in the United States to commit to retiring their elephants to a private sanctuary in 2015.
There are three primary training styles that can be used either separately or together in elephant facilities, each with its own pros and cons for elephant welfare and human safety:
- Free contact: The elephant is handled directly and the elephant and keeper share the same space while they interact. Some facilities use free contact to allow their elephants a great deal of physical freedom, for example leading elephants on walks. Increased exercise of this type can prevent elephants from gaining excessive weight, which can lessen the instance of health problems in joints and feet. Access to medical examination is also unparalleled with free contact systems—veterinarians and keepers can train free contact elephants to allow for many kinds of medical examinations, including dental procedures and blood draws. However, free contact is controversial among practitioners and the public. It requires the use of ankuses, also known as guides, bullhooks, or goads. An ankus consists of a hook attached to a handle and is used in training to guide elephants into the correct position. The ankus can be used on occasion for physical punishment. Additionally, free contact can pose a danger to handlers. All elephants, but especially males in musth, pose hazards to people. There have been several incidents of elephants killing handlers and keepers when being worked in a free contact system. The Association of Zoos and Aquariums in the United States is phasing out the use of free contact with elephants in its member zoos.
- Protected contact: Elephant and keeper never share the same unrestricted space. Instead, keepers interact with elephants through a barrier, and elephants are free to leave the contact area at will. Elephants in a protected contact situation are typically trained through a positive reinforcement system with rewards when training progress is achieved. Well-trained elephants in a protected contact system can allow veterinarians and handlers to have good access for routine care, though not as comprehensively as in free contact systems. Some elephants, especially ill elephants that may not be capable of entering the protected contact area and young elephants that have not yet been trained for protected contact, may be harder to access for veterinary care in a protected contact facility. Protected contact facilities are also unable to take their elephants for walks, which may increase the incidence of obesity and health problems in their elephant populations.
- No contact: No elephant handling takes place unless the elephant is under chemical sedation. Elephants can be moved from one place to another by allowing and disallowing access to different locations, but any medical care or routine maintenance must occur under sedation. The AZA does not allow no contact systems in their member zoos, as they require all elephants to be trained to participate in their own care, including presenting their feet for nail trims, allowing for exams of their ears, eyes, mouth, and teeth, and allowing their blood to be collected. Chemical sedation of an elephant is risky and can cause harm to the animal or to the people immobilizing the animal. As such, minimizing the need for anesthesia as much as possible is desirable in most situations. The lack of training in no contact systems also means that elephants do not receive the enrichment benefits that come with regular voluntary training with positive reinforcement. Despite these concerns, some facilities use no contact systems for particularly aggressive or dangerous elephants, particularly males during musth.
Reproduction
Most elephant populations in captivity in North America, Europe, and Asia are not self-sustaining, meaning that without an increase in birth rates or importation of wild individuals, some captive populations will be extinct within 50 years. Some hurdles to captive reproduction include female infertility and an overrepresentation of males in the captive population.As such, substantial effort has gone into increasing the birth rate in captive elephant populations. Due to the size, intelligence, and strong social bonds of elephants, moving elephants from facility to facility for the purpose of breeding can engender severe logistic hurdles and cause stress to the elephants moved, as well as the elephants present in the new facility. It may be preferable to relocate young males, who would naturally disperse away from their herds of birth in the wild, as opposed to females, who would normally stay with their herd of birth for life in the wild.
Because of the stress and logistics involved in moving elephants from one facility to another, some managers are turning to artificial insemination to produce offspring. Semen may be collected from males in other collections or from wild males to further increase the genetic diversity of the captive population.