Elephant Voices

Category: 1. General News, 4. Welfare News, Elephants in captivity | Date: Jul 24 2008 | By: elephantvoices

Every day we receive messages about how captive elephants are being treated, often with disturbing photos or video footage. A mission of ElephantVoices is to promote responsibility for securing a kinder future for elephants. Our aim is to do this is primarily through education - by inspiring wonder in the intelligence, complexity and voices of elephants - rather than jumping on one campaign after another. We are a small team and we are not able to take on individual battles for each and every elephant. But sometimes we feel compelled to make our opinions known and below is an example. It’s a letter to journalist, Robert Wilonsky in The Dallas Observer e-mailed today, as a response to his request for Joyce to comment on video footage (linked below) of elephants in Africam Safari Zoo in Mexico where the Dallas Zoo plans to send their elephant Jenny.

Dear Robert

The music is hauntingly beautiful and put to the swaying of confined elephants brought tears to my eyes. Why do we humans feel such a need to confine and control other animals? Is our pleasure in seeing them worth the cruelty that we inflict on them? Elephants are intelligent socially complex individuals who have the same basic needs that we have: Freedom and autonomy, companionship and affection, just to name a few.

The first elephant in the video looks very unhealthy; she is too thin; all of the elephants in the video are swaying - a behavior only seen in confined elephants. Like so many captive elephants they are bored and frustrated with nowhere to go and no one to see, no new smells to investigate and nothing to strive for. The result is standing in one place and rocking, slowly losing their minds. Well, wouldn’t we do the same given similar circumstances? I often try to put myself in the elephants’ shoes, so to speak. Ever had to stand for hours and hours alone waiting for that bus that never comes? Feet and back aching? I, too, start to step from one foot to the other. I, too, rock back and forth, I sway. But I don’t wait for a bus for days, for weeks, for months, for years. I have the freedom to choose to go.

We need to wake up to the reality of what we are doing to other creatures and stop hiding behind a lot of constructed arguments for keeping elephants in this way.

Jenny should go to a sanctuary.

Regards, Joyce Poole

Tags: behavior, behaviour, elephants, elephantvoices, jenny, welfare

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Category: 1. General News, 4. Welfare News, Elephants in captivity | Date: Jul 23 2008 | By: elephantvoices

In August Joyce will travel to Washington DC to give her deposition in the case against Ringling Brothers for its treatment of elephants. Preparations have taken literally months of work. Joyce is also likely to go back in October when the court case takes place.

The basis for all of the contributions we make toward the interests of elephants is our long term studies of wild elephants. Some people try to argue that elephants held captive are different from wild elephants because they are domesticated. There are two uses of the term domesticated - one meaning “of the household” and the other a biological one. It is the biological one that is important and in this sense there is no such thing as domesticated elephants. All species of modern elephants are capable of being - and routinely have been - habituated and tamed by humans. They remain, nevertheless, wild animals.

The traditional bullhook used to control an elephant in Thailand (Photo credit Robert Poole). ElephantVoices’ standpoint is that this instrument contributes to misery for elephants held captive, for with it elephants are trained and controlled.

Tags: elephants, elephantvoices, welfare

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Category: 1. General News, 4. Welfare News, Elephants in captivity | Date: Apr 08 2008 | By: admin

Hi all,

There has been a lot of activity on this blog over the last few days and some of it has centered around elephants in zoos. People who love elephants have strong feelings on this topic, some for and some against zoos. There is a lot of rhetoric on both sides and much of it is not supported by the facts.

We chose our name, ElephantVoices, for two reasons - because we study the voices of elephants and because we aim to be a voice for the interests of elephants. After spending many, many years observing elephants in the wild, I think that we have a better idea than most about what elephants enjoy doing - if they are free to pursue their own activities. In our view, the traditional zoo cannot meet the interests of elephants for reasons that we have laid out in an essay we wrote entitled, Mind and Movement: Meeting the interests of elephants.

The point to remember is that we are not keeping elephants in zoos to meet their individual or collective needs, but our own. When it comes to elephants, it cannot be argued that we are breeding them in captivity as an insurance policy against extinction - since it is much more effective biologically, reproductively and economically to ensure their survival in the wild. And it is certainly better for them as individuals to live wild rather than captive lives.

We keep elephants in zoos to meet our need to see them. It may also be fair to argue that we keep them there to act as ambassadors for elephants in the wild, though based on my experience, websites and TV documentaries offer significantly more real education than do the signs at the elephant enclosures at zoos. Often the elephants we see in zoos are poor, bewildered and broken down creatures with behavior far from what we consider real elephant behavior.

So the question for us really is this: What level of individual elephant sacrifice, if you will, is OK so that we can have the pleasure of their presence in our zoos? My feeling is that we should offer elephants close to what they have in the wild - in terms of physical, mental and social stimulation. The truth is that we are far from this. There is a push to make bigger yards for elephants, but in our view these fall square kilometers (or miles) short of what is OK. The $40-60 million dollars price tag would be better spent on an advanced multi-media theatre with a webcam connected directly to a field study supported by the zoo, where a field worker frequently is on hand to introduce us to individual elephants and explain their complex lives to us. Such an elephant reality show would be true education and entertainment for people and conservation for elephants wrapped into one. The running costs would be minimal compared to what it costs to house one or a few elephants.

We’d like to add that we do not want to belittle the efforts of those trying to make a difference for individual elephants in captivity, whether they are paid or volunteers. But with the interest of elephants at heart we deeply believe that a traditional zoo cannot offer them what they deserve and need.

Trumpets, Joyce and Petter

PS: You may want to visit our FAQ about elephants in captivity on ElephantVoices.

Tags: behavior, behaviour, elephants, elephantvoices, welfare

18 responses so far