Elephants live longer in wild than zoos

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Elephants live longer in wild than zoos

By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID (AP Science Writer)

From Associated Press

December 11, 2008 2:47 PM EST

WASHINGTON - Zoo elephants do not live as long as those in the wild, according

to a study sure to stir debate about keeping the giant animals on display.

 

Researchers compared the life spans of elephants in European zoos with those

living in Amboseli National Park in Kenya and others working on a timber

enterprise in Myanmar. Animals in the wild or in natural working conditions had

life spans twice that or more of their relatives in zoos.

 

Animal care activists have campaigned in recent years to discourage keeping

elephants in zoos, largely because of the lack of space and small numbers of

animals that can be kept in a group. Debates have been especially vocal in

Dallas and Los Angeles.

 

The researchers found that the median life span for African elephants in

European zoos was 16.9 years, compared with 56 years for elephants who died of

natural causes in Kenya's Amboseli park. Adding in those elephants killed by

people in Africa lowered the median life span there to 35.9 years. Median means

half died younger than that age and half lived longer.

 

For the more endangered Asian elephants, the median life span in European zoos

was 18.9 years, compared with 41.7 years for those working in the Myanmar Timber

Enterprise. Myanmar is the country formerly known as Burma.

 

There is some good news, though. The life spans of zoo elephants have improved

in recent years, suggesting an improvement in their care and raising, said one

of the report's authors, Georgia J. Mason of the animal sciences department at

the University of Guelph, Canada.

 

But, she added, " protecting elephants in Africa and Asia is far more successful

than protecting them in Western zoos. "

 

There are about 1,200 elephants in zoos, half in Europe, Mason said in an

interview via e-mail. She said researchers concentrated on female elephants,

which make up 80 percent of the zoo population.

 

" One of our more amazing results " was that Asian elephants born in zoos have

shorter life spans than do Asian elephants brought to the zoos from the wild,

she added in a broadcast interview provided by the journal Science, which

published the results in its Friday edition.

 

She noted that zoos usually lack large grazing areas that elephants are used to

in the wild, and that zoo animals often are alone or with one or two other

unrelated animals, while in the wild they tend to live in related groups of

eight to 12 animals.

 

In Asian elephants, infant mortality rates are two times to three times higher

in zoos than in the Burmese logging camps, Mason said via e-mail. And then, in

adulthood, zoo-born animals die prematurely.

 

" We're not sure why, " she said.

 

The study confirms many of the findings of a similar 2002 analysis prepared by

the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. One of the authors

of the new study, Ros Clubb, works for the society.

 

Steven Feldman, a spokesman for the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, contended

the report did not reflect conditions in North America. In addition, he said, it

is hard to compare conditions in zoos and in the wild. " Every event in a zoo is

observed, " he said, while scientists can study only a small number of events in

nature.

 

The project, or individual researchers, received financial support from Canada's

National Science and Engineering Research Council, Prospect Burma Foundation,

Charles Wallace Burma Trust, Three Oaks Foundation, Whitney-Laing Foundation,

Toyota Foundation, Fantham Memorial Research Scholarship and University College,

London.

 

Among the researchers, Mason has served as a paid consultant to Disney's Animal

Kingdom USA and one of authors, Khyne U. Mar, has been a paid consultant for

Woburn Safari Park, about an hour north of London.

 

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