Zoos are Dangerous to Elephants' Health

Lead University of Guelph animal-welfare researcher, Georgia Mason has discovered that elephants living in zoos are less likely to reach old age than their counterparts living in protected populations in Africa and Asia. "Our data suggests there is something going on that is problematic enough that it is bringing their lives to an untimely end," concludes Mason.

In fact, the difference is significant and alarming. Researchers found that Asian elephants lining in European zoos have approximately half the average life span of elephants born into the logging industry in Myanmar, not exactly a "cushy" existence. Not a single African elephant living in a European zoo has reached the age of 50. In contrast, about one third of the African elephants living in Amboseli National Park in Kenya reached 50 or older, according to a recent study in Science.

Mason and his team of international scientists based their findings on data culled from protected populations of elephants in Africa and Asia along with data from 270 zoos in Europe. This represents half of the world's population of zoo elephants and goes back to the 1960s. Not surprisingly, conditions have improved for zoo elephants. Those who arrived at zoos in the recent past were more likely to live longer than those arriving from the wild fifty years ago.

Nonetheless, the data suggests that the existence of elephants in zoos is coming to an end. In fact, until there is a better understanding of why zoo life shortens elephants' lives, researchers themselves have called for an end to transferring elephants from the wild, minimizing inter-zoo transfers and suggest breeding elephants should be restricted to those zoos that exhibit no harmful effects on their captive born elephants.

"We're not trying to go for the jugular of all zoos here," Mason said.
We recognize that there are bound to be some zoos that are better than others. But the time has come to work out what good practice really is."