Valerie Chalcraft
February 8, 2010
Valerie J. Chalcraft, Ph.D.
Applied Animal Behavior
Statement on stereotypic behavior in elephants
Elephants are one of the most commonly visited attractions at zoos but what role do they
play? Although zoos are promoted as educational, the environments offered in zoos
cannot provide enough opportunities for natural behavior. Therefore the public do not see
true representations of the species.
When an elephant or any other species is placed into an environment that does not afford
the means to carry out natural behaviors, normal behavior is frustrated and stereotypic
behaviors result. It is my understanding that this behavior is reported in the elephants at
the Topeka
recently, more recognition has been given to the fact that the environment is what is
abnormal.
When not given the opportunities to range, forage, and socialize freely, stereotyped
swaying or “weaving” occurs. Elephants in small pens or chains are often seen swaying
side-to-side or forward-to-backward, and sometimes nodding their head and swinging
their trunks. Frustrated movements and unpredictable management schedules increase the
frequency.
A 2002 study at the University of Oxford
zoos display stereotypical behaviors. More recently, a 2008 study conducted by the
the day.
One study of very young elephants reared with inhibited movement showed a decrease in
manipulative behaviors and social behaviors (including play) when given the freedom to
engage. The stereotyped behaviors prevented the young elephants from developing
normal social relationships.
Studies show that animals who engage in stereotypical behavior show a disorganized
brain function. Environment enrichment, intended to provide alternative outlets for
natural behavior, may reduce the stereotypical behaviors temporarily but rarely eliminate
them.
Given the impact of a captive environment, it is not surprising that the Oxford
found that elephants in zoos die at a younger age, are more prone to aggression and are
less capable of breeding. A 2008 study published in the journal Science similarly reported
that elephants in zoos are dying far earlier than their counterparts in relatively protected
wild and semi-wild populations.
Valerie J. Chalcraft is an experimental psychologist who studies animal behavior. She holds
an MA and a PhD from the University of Nevada , Reno
use the signs of American Sign Language (ASL) to communicate. In addition to her interest
in how chimpanzees modulate signs to indicate meaning, she has studied how chimpanzees
incorporate the signs and actions of others into their behavioral repertoires.
Dr. Chalcraft has an interest applying the principles of behavior to assess conditions in
captivity and to improve the welfare of many species, both human and non-human. She is a
companion animal behaviorist and has a clinical practice, Applied Animal Behavior, in
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Lisa Kane
February 21, 2010
Mayor William W. Bunten
215 SE 7th
Dear Mr. Mayor and Distinguished Council Members:
I am an attorney, author and co-founder of the Coalition for Captive Elephant Well-Being. I have been deeply involved in the public policy debate about captive elephant welfare since 1999. I as a member of AZA for six years, during which I lobbied that organization to amend its Elephant Management Standards to better reflect contemporary scientific knowledge and ethical norms. I wrote white papers and memoranda of law for AZA's Board of Directors and delivered a session paper on captive elephant welfare at the AZA's Annual Conference in 2005. In 2006, I organized a conference at Tufts University Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine on captive elephant welfare. I was co-editor and contributing author to the book that resulted from the symposium, Elephant in the Room: Science and Welfare of Elephants in Captivity by Tufts University
It is from this vantage point that I wish to strongly recommend to you that you consider allowing the two elephant residents of Topeka Zoo to retire to The Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee Kansas
Ironically, by protecting the elephants from weather conditions to which they cannot adjust, the zoo is holding them for months under conditions that are environmentally impoverished, unnatural in the extreme, and detrimental to their foot health, at a minimum.
At The Elephant Sanctuary, Topeka Zoo's elephants would enjoy a climate that allows them free access outdoors year round, the companionship of elephants of their own species, huge spaces of natural substrate in which to climb, walk, forage, rest and explore, mud and dust wallows in which to roll, and ponds in which to swim and play.
Topeka Zoo's elephants have given decades of their lives to delight the city's citizens. Whether on or off exhibit, the zoo's elephants are always on the clock, never free to go where they please, never free to choose their own companion, never free to exercise dignified autonomy in a rich environment designed for their well-being alone. If the city decides that these two girls have earned the right to retire, I recommend that the City strongly consider the option of allowing them to relocate to The Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee
Respectfully submitted,
Lisa Kane, JD
Keith Lindsay, PhD
8 February 2010
Mayor William W. Bunten
215 SE 7th Street
Mayor Bunten and Members of the Topeka
I am a conservation biologist and environmental consultant based in Oxford Africa . My experience with elephants began in Kenya (in East Africa) with the renowned Amboseli Elephant Research Project, studying feeding ecology, population demography and ecosystem change; I’ve remained a part of that project for over 30 years. I’ve also been involved with elephants in Botswana (in southern Africa), Mali and Ghana (in West Africa) and Gabon and Democratic Republic of Congo (in Central Africa ) on elephant research, management and conservation. Over the past five years, I have contributed to policy discussions on wild and captive elephants in South Africa and on the well-being of captive elephants in North America . I have been a member of the IUCN’s (International Union for the Conservation of Nature) African Elephant Specialist Group, and I have good and regular contact with researchers and conservationists of Asian elephants as well.
I am offering my expertise in support of moving the two elephants, Sunda and Tembo, from the Topeka Zoo to a sanctuary. While I have not visited the zoo, I am aware of the conditions there and hope to provide a better understanding of the wide range of problems they can cause for elephants. This includes degenerative diseases and neurotic and abnormal behaviors such as heightened aggression and repetitive rocking and swaying, which are seen at the Topeka Zoo. Such problems simply are not seen in natural conditions, for example in the well-studied Amboseli population in southern Kenya
Elephants need space for health and well-being.
Elephants are the biggest of all land animals, and they need space, lots of space, yet the Topeka Zoo holds the elephants on less than one acre of land. They need space for several reasons: exercise and metabolic balance; health of their limbs and joints; the psychological well-being that comes from activity and exercising their minds in exploration of habitats and searching for food; room to choose their social partners or avoid those they don’t get along with.
The evidence from their bodies and brains – their long legs and persistent spatial memory – indicates that elephants are clearly adapted for walking long distances on both a daily and annual basis. Wet season ranges, when food is abundant, are often larger than ranges in dry seasons when food is restricted. Studies of the home range sizes of Asian and African elephants have all shown spatial needs on the order of 100-200 km comparison, the less-than-one-acre elephant exhibit at the Topeka Zoo amounts to less than 0.004 km elephants are shaped by evolution to cover nothing is that adaptable, to cope with a reduction by more than four orders of magnitude in their living space as they are taken from nature to captivity.
When elephants don’t have room to move, and particularly those in cold climates where elephants are confined for long periods indoors, they often develop life-threatening conditions such as limb, foot and joint pathologies, which in turn require intensive and expensive veterinary interventions. Zoo vets and keepers spend a considerable portion of time reacting to and treating symptoms of these conditions, but no amount of care and treatment can substitute for the beneficial, preventive effects of sufficient room to stretch those long legs and move those big feet for dozens of miles a day.
As noted, these problems are simply not seen in Asian or African habitats, where elephants have sufficient room to move. The problems cannot be solved in zoos by providing “variety” in a small space; the only solution is space itself, space suitable for animals of this enormous body size on the scale of tens, hundreds or thousands of acres
Elephants are profoundly social animals.
Elephants are, above all else, highly social animals, but the Topeka Zoo holds just two elephants who are not even of the same species. In wild habitats, elephants live in large, extended families in which young elephants grow up learning critical life skills from family members, including how to carefully mother infants. Elephants deprived of this upbringing become dysfunctional adults. In the course of a typical year, an elephant is likely to meet and interact with hundreds of other elephants, and playbacks of vocalizations have shown that they respond differently to family members, more distant relatives, acquaintances and strangers. They may form “friendships” with non-kin elephants and avoid others if there are aggressive encounters.
Adult elephants that are deprived of the company of other elephants, or of elephant companions of their own choosing, are likely to suffer from stress. Human keepers, no matter how dedicated or empathetic, are no substitute for contact with other elephants. Similarly, placing adult elephants of the two completely different species together, as seen at the Topeka Zoo, does not constitute a normal social group, is likely to result in stressful behavior and is evidence of a lack of understanding of basic biology by a zoo’s administration.
Elephant sanctuaries better meet elephants’ needs.
The single best way to avoid unnecessary disease and premature death, and give elephants the opportunity to be healthy, happy animals behaving normally, is to provide space on the magnitude of hundreds of acres for a social group of elephants. The only U.S. facilities currently employing this approach are two elephant sanctuaries – in California and Tennessee
Conclusion
Zoos are said to aid conservation through education of the public about elephants and the challenges they face as a species, leading to greater support for field programmes. But in zoos, what people get are glimpses of unhealthy and socially disturbed “replicas” of the real animals, with no clear understanding of what goes on in their habitats back home.
To better meet the complex physical and psychological needs of elephants, zoos must leave behind the old way of keeping them in small, urban zoo displays, such as that found in Topeka Zoo, in favor of large, sanctuary-like reserves situated in climate-appropriate areas where elephants can range widely throughout the year in voluntarily chosen social groups and live better, healthier lives. To do otherwise would be cruel and, given what we know about the biological needs of elephants, inexcusable.
For all the reasons noted above, and from my long experience with normal elephants in
natural conditions, I strongly support the transfer of the two elephants to a sanctuary.
Sincerely,
Keith Lindsay, PhD
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John Freeze
February 6, 2010
Mayor William Bunten
City Hall
215 SE 7th Street
Dear Mayor Bunten and Members of the Topeka
I am a retired Animal Husbandry Supervisor from the North Carolina Zoological Park
I understand that the Topeka Zoo has two elephants, an African and an Asian female, that are both advanced in years by zoo standards. I would like to talk about them some more, but first, a little history about what I learned while working with the elephants during my career.
The NC Zoo's first barn and elephant exhibit of three acres was first constructed in 1980. Shortly after my retirement in 2005, the zoo completed a new barn to house up to 10 elephants and expanded the exhibit to almost seven acres. This elephant facility is considered one of the most progressive in the nation.
Having worked in one of the best elephant programs, where protected contact and operant conditioning were utilized, I still had some misgivings about the quality of care we could really deliver to these large mammals. Although expanding the exhibit and building the new barn did help some, my observation was that these elephants really needed multiple acres of living space, not just doubling the exhibit space. They also required much better, and more natural, social bonding among these animals.
In general zoos expanding their exhibits are falling further behind in recognizing the vast amount of space these animals require, where many of these new exhibits are already obsolete. The few elephants that are placed together in a social group in zoos do little to replicate any of the family groups in the wild that are important for successful reproduction.
To some degree the NC Zoo and the Topeka Zoo are trying their best in their own way to provide the best care for their elephants that they can under the circumstances they have been given. Unfortunately for the elephants, this may not be enough and falls short in providing the best living conditions for them. Fortunately, the NC Zoo had only African elephants, whereas your two elephants do not have the benefit of being with its own kind or the same specie. I am sure they coped as well they could under the circumstances. With the closer confinement in your smaller exhibit and barn, I would think there would be a higher level of stress and aggression, since they have less room to avoid each other.
Like many city zoos that may be land-locked for further expansion or under economic hardship, building new or expanded elephant exhibits is not an option. If the Topeka Zoo is in this situation, this can pose a question of what is best for the zoo and zoo management, or what is best long-term for the elephants there. The zoo may feel pressured, more or less, to settle with what it has and make the best of it. This predicament may not be the best for the city or the elephants.
I am sure the city and the zoo have thought about what will happen over the coming years to the elephants, as they grow older and require more extensive and expensive medical care. Even if the decision was made now to place the elephants in another zoo, very few zoos would accept these animals, because of their lack of socialization, being older, and are also beyond reproductive age. Although the zoo may feel that the elephants are somewhat contented in their situation, one elephant will surely die before the other, leaving one alone, very possibly for the rest of her life.
The question the city faces now is: Does it want to give the elephants a life sentence to remain at the Topeka Zoo, or consider doing something different and more courageous for their benefit?
I believe the city has a golden opportunity now by considering retiring these aging elephants to one of the two recognized elephant sanctuaries where they can thrive and enjoy being with their own kind, exploring and roaming over many acres of land that they never knew. What better gift to give these elephants that have faithfully served the zoo and the visitors for so many years.
Sincerely,
John Freeze
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David Hancocks
David Hancocks
10 February 2010
Mayor William W. Bunten
215 SE 7th Street
Re: Elephants at the Topeka
Dear Mayor Bunten and Members of the Topeka
I was director of Seattle
Dr Terry Maple, former president of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) and director of Zoo Atlanta, in his book “Zoo Man: Inside the Zoo revolution,” stated, “Hancocks may be the most innovative zoo director in the world.” James Doherty, former curator Bronx Zoo, in the Quarterly Review of Zoo Biology, 2002, stated, “Hancocks has been one of the most innovative zoo exhibit designers in the past 40 years, and a part of teams that have set standards for others to follow.” The journal “International Zoo News,” reviewing my chapter on exhibit design in the book “Wild Mammals in Captivity,” described it as “thirteen pages of the best common sense one will ever read on the subject of zoo design.” My book on zoos, “A Different Nature,” was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Science Book of the Year in 2002.
In the late 1960s, as a newly graduated architect, I went to work in the architect's department at London Zoo, having never previously set foot in such a place, fondly imagining that its various specialists would know about designing for animal behavior, and thereby provide lessons I could transpose to design better buildings for human behavior. (I was at the time interested in specializing in hospital design.)
What I discovered, of course, is that animal behavioral needs were not considered by the Zoo's architects, just as regular architects typically give no attention to human behavioral needs. The focus for most architects is overwhelmingly on style, fashion, aesthetic statements, budgets, construction techniques, and, for zoo architects, to make sure the animals cannot escape, but very rarely to any behavioral, psychological, emotional, or social needs.
London Zoo in the late 1960s was, essentially, doing exactly what it had been doing ever since it opened its doors as the first 'modern' zoo in 1828 and became the exemplar for all modern zoos: it was putting wild animals on display, holding them captive for the mildly curious to come and gaze at. The same applies today and, with very rare exceptions, it is what all other zoos around the world are doing.
I have directed, planned, designed exhibits for, patiently observed, written about, argued and pleaded with zoos for the past 40 years, and found it a very frustrating experience. It is almost impossible to get zoo people to consider anything other than having animals. They go to Africa to look at wild animals, but rarely see much beyond their shape and size. They lack a holistic vision, with no sense of the animal as an integral part of its natural environment. They go to other zoos to look at wild animals, but are generally unaware of the inadequacies of the zoo environments most zoo animals endure. This myopic view does not apply to every zookeeper, but it is in my experience the most typical situation, and is remarkably commonplace.
In recent years, Zoo marketing and PR staff together with bean-counters have risen to the top of the decision making structure in most US Zoos. The result is a combination of staunch defense of the status quo while simultaneously promoting a supposedly new direction for modern zoos as some sort of Ark
When I was design coordinator and then director of Seattle
It took 12 years before another Zoo tried to copy what we did for gorillas, for example: Today, all zoos claim to display their animals in "natural habitat" exhibits, and these do look more natural for most visitors than the old barren enclosures. But, for the animals, essentially nothing has changed. They may as well be in the old empty cages. Instead of replacing damaged trees and shrubs, zookeepers find it more convenient to simply prevent the animals having contact with live vegetation, using various clever means and devices such as electric wires disguised to look like vines or grasses. The animals are thus restricted to narrow dusty strips, surrounded but not able to make contact with the lush vegetation. The public like these views, and have abandoned the criticisms they once aimed at barred cages, content to accept an illusion.
Zoos as Conservation Centers
A very large percentage of modern zoo goers have been convinced that the central mission of zoos is conservation. In reality, however, zoos play a very peripheral and typically just a technical role, and have been involved in only a very few instances of wild species reintroduction.
If one wanted to establish a park to breed endangered species and help save them from extinction, it would not resemble a zoo. A conservation park would hold large numbers of the same species, in big spaces, and keep them well away from humans.
Zoos are designed and operated principally and essentially for putting animals on display. Their claims about species preservation is mostly puffery of the fact that they have to breed animals or they would have none to put on display. With extremely rare exceptions, any true conservation benefit by zoos is invariably miniscule, accidental, and marginal.
Zoo Education
One hears zoos today talking every more loudly about "inspiring" their visitors to take action for the sake of conservation or sustainability. The claims are made repeatedly, and with increasing volume.
Researchers, however, have found no evidence to support these assertions. Zoos know this, but it has not caused them to pause in their hyperbolic declarations.
I have taken time to spell out all this background because I think it is critical to a full understanding of the situation regarding elephants in zoos.
In recent years there has been significantly increased public criticism about conditions for elephants in zoos. Editorials around the country have debated the physical cruelty and the psychological damage that most elephants suffer in captivity. Very recently, commissioners of St Lucie County, FL, approved planning permission for development of a "National Elephant Center
Rather than welcoming such opportunities for improvement, zoos have presented a united defense against them. True, they have started talking more about elephants as intelligent, perceptive and social animals -- seemingly unaware of these qualities until zoo critics brought them to the fore -- but at the same time they have been beating their empty Conservation and Education drums much more loudly.
In almost every instance where zoos have been criticized about inadequate conditions for elephants they have charged their critics with having a hidden agenda: to close down zoos altogether. I have long been an ardent critic of zoo elephant conditions, in terms of their physical, behavioral, social, emotional, and psychological shortcomings, but I have never said zoos should be closed. Indeed, I have long repeated that zoos should be improved. And this, in my experience, is the same view that almost all zoo critics hold.
It seems ironic that zoos decry their critics as "animal activists." Zoos themselves should be the most outspoken and active animal activists on the planet. They should be speaking out on behalf of abused animals in factory farms, in circuses, in bullfight rings, in roadside zoos, in bad zoos in third world countries, in all instances of neglect or cruelty. But zoos never do this. Perhaps they are fearful of the old adage about people in glass houses not throwing stones.
Nonetheless, it seems to me inevitable that urban zoos will have to give up on keeping elephants. As we learn more and more about elephants and their complex needs, it is becoming increasingly clear that most zoos simply can not provide either sufficient space or good enough space. If zoos are smart, they could see this as a blessing. The modern world desperately needs places (zoos, if you will) where they can make contact with and be reminded of the great diversity of life, of the wonderful intricacies of ecology, of the complex interdependencies within nature, and of the need for us to preserve whole and entire natural systems and wilderness habitats, and not just isolated species. If zoos could metamorphose into such institutions, focusing on the big picture of natural history, revealing the intricate beauty of nature and not just warehoused components of it, they could become truly useful institutions in our cities.
Frustratingly, the great amounts of energy and the massive amounts of money that zoos are expending in order to hang on 66to the outmoded habit of keeping an elephant in every zoo, and their stubborn insistence that "you can't call this place a zoo if it doesn't have an elephant," is preventing them from making the sort of enlightened progress that is so badly required.
Meanwhile, most elephants in most zoos are suffering a wide range of problems, because of zoo conditions. The more urgently zoos insist on their right to continue these practices the more will elephants continue experiencing physical and mental pain, and shorter lives of deprived opportunity, and the sooner zoos will find themselves increasingly irrelevant to modern society.
Having visited the Tennessee Elephant Sanctuary, and having witnessed the exceptionally different quality of life those elephants enjoy compared to typical zoo life, I would like to respectfully but strongly encourage you to seriously consider sending Topeka Zoo’s two elephants there, roaming the rest of their years on 2700 acres of woodland in the company of several other calm and comfortable and very clearly
Unfortunately, whoever you hire to be the new zoo director will assuredly be very greatly
pressured to toe the AZA party line, and will thus insist that your elephants remain zoo
bound.
Sincerely yours,
David Hancocks
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MEL RICHARDSON
Monday, February 22, 2010
Observations from my meeting with Dennis Taylor at the Topeka Zoo to visit Sunda and Tembo
As I stated before coming to Topeka
· Sunda has chronic foot disease associated with her inadequate enclosure and her long hours standing on concrete. All four of her feet had areas of concern where the keepers are working, diligently I might add, paring out the necrotic (dead) tissue. There is at least one area which required the keepers cutting the sole away into the underlying support tissue. Once the sole’s horny layer is removed it never fully regenerates. I could detect no malodorous material today which indicates the keepers are currently keeping on top of the problem.
· Sunda’s left chronic temporal gland issue is presently less inflamed than it has been in the past.
· Tembo still battles severe cracking nails. This too is a condition brought on by unnaturally inflexible substrate such as concrete. Her soles appeared to be free from active abscesses such as Sunda’s.
· Bonded elephants are especially talkative with each other, Asians ‘chirp’ and Africans ‘purr.’ I saw no evidence of elephant bonding between those two elephants. I have no doubt they have developed mutual coexistence with each other over the years. They have had no choice. They are all they have.
I saw nothing yesterday at the Topeka Zoo to change my mind. Sunda and Tembo should be removed from that inadequate enclosure and moved to a location with natural substrate and a more clement climate.
As I told the zoo staff, I was asked for my professional opinion, I was not sitting at home in Paradise , California , when it occurred to me to go to Kansas
Dr Mel Richardson, Veterinarian
Paradise , California
