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Lack of exercise and movement
- Captive elephants are often kept in small cages or pens that do not allow them to move around freely. This lack of exercise and movement can have detrimental effects on their anatomy, leading to a decline in overall health and well-being.
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From shortened lifespans to chronic health problems, elephants in captivity encounter numerous issues that raise important questions about their treatment and conservation. When elephants are held captive, their average lifespan is significantly reduced compared to those in the wild.
The team found that wild-captured elephants exhibited a median lifespan three to seven years shorter than that of captive-born elephants. This heightened mortality rate proved consistent ...
- Overview
- Wild and Long-Lived
- Survival Strategies
- Huge Improvements
Wild elephants in protected areas of Africa and Asia live more than twice as long as those in European zoos, a new study has found.
Wild elephants in protected areas of Africa and Asia live more than twice as long as those in European zoos, a new study has found.
Animal welfare advocates have long clashed with zoo officials over concerns about the physical and mental health of elephants in captivity.
British and Canadian scientists who conducted the six-year study say their finding puts an end to that debate once and for all.
"We're worried that the whole system basically doesn't work and improving it is essential," said lead author Georgia Mason, a zoologist at the University of Guelph in Canada.
Obesity and stress are likely factors for the giant land mammals' early demise in captivity, she said.
Mason and colleagues looked at data from more than 4,500 wild and captive African and Asian elephants.
The data include elephants in European zoos, which house about half of the world's captive elephants; protected populations in Amboseli National Park in Kenya; and the Myanma Timber Enterprise in Myanmar (Burma), a government-run logging operation where Asian elephants are put to work.
Only the survival rates of females were analyzed because of their importance to future populations.
The findings show that captive elephants live considerably shorter lives.
For African elephants, the median life span is 17 years for zoo-born females, compared to 56 years in the Amboseli National Park population.
For Asian elephants, the results are "much more worrying because they are the rarer of the two species," Mason said.
To keep zoo elephants alive longer, the authors recommend routine screening for obesity (something that's done in U.S. captive elephant populations), as well as monitoring stress via a chemical known as interleukin-6.
Checking this biological marker, which shows that the body's immune system is battling sickness, would allow zoo officials to intervene before the animal is seriously ill, Mason said.
Robert Wiese, collections director at the San Diego Zoo in California, was not part of this study. He said making a comparison between the lifespan of captive and wild elephants may seem deceptively simple.
"There are just so many confounding issues, especially in small sample sizes [of] zoo animals, that it's hard to really separate and make sure you're comparing apples to apples," he said.
In 2004 Wiese co-authored a paper in the journal Zoo Biology showing the opposite of Mason's findings: that zoo elephants live as long as those in the wild.
He said that within the last decade accredited facilities have made huge improvements in the care of captive elephants by providing better nutrition to combat obesity, as well as environmental enrichment activities that reduce stress.
Dec 11, 2008 · But a new and controversial study in tomorrow's issue of Science suggests that captivity is so bad for female elephants' health and overall well-being that their life spans are less than that of half of those of protected populations in Africa and Asia.
Aug 7, 2018 · Here, Lahdenperä et al. use records from Myanmar timber elephants to show that wild-caught elephants have increased mortality compared to captive-born elephants for many years after capture.
- Mirkka Lahdenperä, Khyne U. Mar, Alexandre Courtiol, Virpi Lummaa
- 2018
Aug 7, 2018 · The study shows that even years after their capture, wild-caught elephants' mortality rate remains increased, and their average life expectancy is several years shorter compared to...
Aug 7, 2018 · The researchers found that wild-caught elephants have an average life expectancy that is several years shorter compared to that of captive-born elephants. The analysis was focused on data that spanned nearly a century and included the records of over 5,000 timber elephants in Myanmar.
