Elephants in zoos

A recent survey of Asian elephants in European zoos showed that their lifespan is much, much shorter than for elephants in the wild. Ed and Brian go into details of this survey.

The survey does not look at African elephants, nor at North American zoos - in both cases I feel that the picture looks much better, if nothing else because North American zoos tend to be newer, not located in the middle of a big city, and thus more spacious.

In the comments on Ed's post, I said: "Many elephants in zoos are kept in enclosures that are too small for them. This is why more and more zoos are shutting down their elephant exhibits and sending their elephants to a couple of zoos (mostly in the southern USA, like the one in Asheboro NC where the bloggers met a couple of months ago) which have large expanses of land for elephants and are specifically geared for keeping these animals in captivity, breeding them and taking care of them properly. This recent trend may be the cause of the recent slight improvement in the lifespan numbers you mention - the numbers are averages of many zoos. I am assuming that as more and more zoos abandon keeping elephants, and send them to those few zoos that can keep them, the statistics will improve more. Will they ever match the lifespans in the wild is an open question at this time."

Keep in mind that here I was talking about African elephants in the North American zoos, the population that was not the target of the published study. We don't know what the numbers are for these elephants (or do we? - anyone knows?).

Related recent elephant news.