Do you remember the first time you saw an elephant?
Nah, me either.
But if we were elephants we might remember.
The old saying about having a memory like an elephant's isn't a myth. Science agrees that elephants build up a memory of each other over time. The oldest members of the group can indicate to the others whether a newcomer is friendly or not.
They are amazing animals and widely considered a crowd pleaser and cornerstone of many zoos.
This is why many were sad to hear the Philadelphia Zoo announce that it will close its elephant exhibit and send its four inhabitants elsewhere.
At first, that sounded like bad news. But it's actually terrific news for the elephants - and, really, anyone who frequents zoos ought to care more about what is best for the elephants. The elephants deserve more room than the Philadelphia Zoo can afford, so the zoo made a very responsible decision.
Philadelphia's elephants have a unique history. Of the four elephants that currently live at the zoo, three are African elephants and one Asian. The Asian elephant, Dulary, has been housed with one of the African elephants, Petal, most of her life. This wasn't an issue when the two were brought together. Yet, at some point, zoo professionals decided that African and Asian elephants should not be housed together for temperamental reasons. But since Dulary and Petal lived together for so long, the zoo chose to keep them that way anyway.
Even more remarkable is that the foursome lived peacefully in a relatively small space. The elephant enclosure at the Philadelphia Zoo is only about half an acre large. For a species that is used to roaming, that isn't much.
In the spring, Dulary will retire to an elephant sanctuary in Tennessee, and the other three pachyderms will drive down Interstate-95 to join the two elephants at the Maryland Zoo in Baltimore. They will have six acres to share among five elephants, a ratio that sounds much better than what we could offer here in Philadelphia. Lucky Dulary has won the elephant lottery. She will have 2,000 acres on which to roam with an entire herd of other Asian elephants.
I'm relived that the Philadelphia Zoo followed the example of its Detroit, San Francisco, Chicago and the Bronx counterparts. Elephants are complex, intelligent creatures. They form close bonds within social networks, and they have advanced ways of communicating with each other over wide areas. They deserve to be with each other and they deserve as much open space as possible.
If only someone would explain that to the zoo in Alaska.
One lonely elephant, Maggie, lives in Alaska. She is housed at the Alaska Zoo in Anchorage and she is overweight and most certainly depressed. I think we can all agree that living year round in Alaska without any contact with our own species would make us depressed. But rather than move Maggie to a facility where she could interact with other elephants, the Alaska Zoo has invested $1 million in a variety of stop-gap measures. It commissioned a $150,000 elephant treadmill, and guess what - Maggie won't even stand on it, let alone exercise.
Good for you, Maggie. Go on strike. We're all pulling for you.
The problem with zoos is that they have two distinctly incongruous roles.
On one hand, zoos entertain. You can't replace an actual elephant with a picture of one and expect small children to be equally as excited. And there's also the matter of financing a zoo.
But conversely, zoos are conservation organizations.
Although you wouldn't know just by walking through the gates, the Philadelphia Zoo plays a major role in conservation efforts locally and worldwide. It has directly supported efforts to restore the diamondback terrapin, a turtle endangered by our encroachment onto the Jersey shore. And the day the zoo announced that its four elephants would be leaving, it also pledged $100,000 to the Bornean Elephant Conservation Unit, which protects the endangered Bornean elephant. The zoo will also be contributing to Dulary's cost at the Tennessee sanctuary.
That's worth remembering the next time you visit the zoo. I'm sure Dulary won't forget.
Sarah Rothman is a fifth-year Bioengineering Ph.D. candidate and 2002 Engineering alumna from Fayetteville, N.Y. The Sounds of Science appears on Mondays. Her e-mail address is rothman@dailypennsylvanian.com.
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