I missed the September visitor’s day, but made it to the Riddle Elephant Sanctuary today.
Amy the African is still pregnant, due December 2007.
There are two visiting female Africans from a park in California for breeding; Artie mounted one while we were there. An awesome sight.
Felix is weaning Maximus the three year old, which consists of grabbing his trunk and pushing him backwards across the enclosure when he tries to nurse.
There’s an aging girl here that the local animal activists are trying to get sent there to retire.
The zoo folk say she’s happy where she is.
Is it really that much better than the forest-like enclosure at our zoo, do you think?
I have no real opinion of the controversy. I’m just wondering.
Carnivorousplant, I know you’ve mentioned the other Elephant Sanctuary in TN before - the Philadelphia Zoo is closing their elephant exhibit; three of the elephants will go to the Baltimore Zoo, but the fourth is headed to that one in Tennessee. Is it any good?
As much as I enjoy going to the Zoo and being able to see many animals - especially those not native to the Americas (like the Panda!), I still feel sad that they are enclosed and can’t be in their natural environment. It’s probably hardest too on the animals who live in large packs/herds and would roam over great distances in the wild. I’ll get off my soap box now.
PETA wanted to send Ellen from the Little Rock Zoo to one of sanctuaries. Mr. Riddle said he would be happy to have her, but it was best to leave a 50 year old elephant at zoo where she’s spent most of her time.
Here are links:
Riddle
The Hohenwald folks are “caregivers” and PETA likes them a lot. They recently had a caregiver killed by an elephant. They’ve got more money. They don’t keep male elephants. It’s basically a place to go to die. Check out their web cam, they seem happy playing in a pool or browsing in the field. I saw one watching four white tailed deer once. 
The Riddle folks aren’t liked by PETA. Lots of folks do studies with them. They are trainers. Note that the circus tricks like raising feet, standing on two legs, etc. are for purposes of caring for the animal. Examining their feet, doing toenails, getting ropes or chains of them to restrain them. They want to breed elephants, have 20% of the male Africans in the United States and will take any elephant.
There is an Animal Planet episode of “Growing Up Elephant” about the birth of Maximus.
Thanks for the links and info, Carnivorousplant. It’s good to know that there are folks like the Riddles who have this sanctuary for elephants and are even helping with breeding them. At the same time, though, there’s probably also a need for the Hohenwald place; I think the elephant from Philly who is headed there is one that had problems with one of the other elephants. Guess it must be a female.
Again, thanks for the info.
That seems strange since the TN folks don’t restrain the elephants, and keep them in two groups according to species. Maybe they do in special cases. I wouldn’t think you would stick her in an unsupervised group.
I looked at the Riddle link but didn’t see the part about breeding.
Why are they breeding the elephants? Are the babies to go to other zoos? Are they released into the wild? (Seems like they’d have trouble finding a new herd.) Is there a shortage of capitve elephants?
To prevent their becomng extinct. Notice all the elephants, like Amy, who were “brought to the US when his herd was culled.” That means some Africa country moved a group of people into the area where the herd lived. They raided the farms and were killed. A calf was lucky to be captured for a zoo or pet. If you release them into the wild, they would be killed to make room for people.
They aren’t going to produce a herd of hundreds. It’s difficult, given things like the long birth path (I’m probably using the wrong term) part of which is traveled without the umbilical cord, and the propensity for first time mothers to kill the calf. In a herd, there are aunts who’ve had calves to help care for them.
Studying the way elephants live and have young yields information to take care of the remaining animals in the wild.
There are only 28,000 to 42,000 Asian elephants alive in the wild. You would expect an elephant conservationist to under estimate, but I’ve heard the number is as low as 20,000.
Fight my ignorance, please. I thought the reason why elephants were culled was because there were too many of them in their shrunken habitat. In other words, the problem isn’t that there aren’t enough elephants breeding-- it’s habitat loss.
Is the effort now to try to keep a healthy breeding population in captivity out of fear that there won’t be any wild ones left? How does the geography of Africa play into this? I thoiugh there were large swaths of land unsuitable for humans that were inhabited by elephant herds and other wildlife.
Another misconception that I may hold: I thought that elephants and their behavior were very well studied. I’ve seen dozens of televison programs about them. What mysteries of breeding behavior don’t scientists undertstand?
It’s six of one and half a dozen of the other, I would think. If a government moves people to the elephant’s area, that would be habitat loss.
One would think so, but the elephants are too dumb to move when people are relocated. They just see corn and lunch, so they die.
I just listen to the elephant trainer guy. One person was studying pheromones in urine and how it acts to signal that the female is in breeding condition.
Interesting and apropos article from today’s NY Times, about elephant societies and dysfunction.
Thanks, Knorf.
The pheromone study was done with Asians, not Africans as I implied.