Fun New Relatives

[ricevermicelli]

My future brother-in-law (not the guy my sister is marrying, but that guy's brother) is Curator of Large Mammals at a really major zoo.

His last business trip was to shop for elephants.

Then he had to explain to senators why there should be elephants at the zoo. I am dying to know which senators are anti-elephant. Also, I cannot imagine how one approaches this particular debate problem. All my efforts to explain why we should have elephants fetch up at statements like "Duh!" and "Cuz they're awesome!"

Comments

why do we need elephants?

[macthud]

Emergency, last-ditch fire apparatus!

Emissions-friendly(er) demolitions experts!

Confidence enhancement for mice with inferiority complexes!

More reasons for elephants

[caulay.livejournal.com]

Because the Chinese and Russians have elephants! (Do we want there to be an elephant gap?)

To move heavy loads after a nuclear war reduces us to a stone age (semi-)civilization.

Self-mobile shading devices.

Remembering things when the PDAs all go dead (see above re: stone age).

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

Awesomest job ever.

Even More Reasons for Elephants.

[zathrus.livejournal.com]

(mostly tongue-in-cheek)

They generate business. (Every little kid I've ever known has enjoyed seeing elephants at the zoo.)

People expect to see them there.

Then you can join the (inter?)national effort to figure out a way to artificially inseminate elephants! And baby elephants would be totally awesome. (I'm thinking it'll have to involve robotics somehow. Human arms just aren't long enough.)

Newt

Artificially inseminating elephants

[ricevermicelli.livejournal.com]

This appears to be a solved problem - my sister had an invitation to watch the third attempt to artificially inseminate the elephant, but the elephant got pregnant on the second try.

Re: Artificially inseminating elephants

[zathrus.livejournal.com]

That's pretty nifty! You have considerably more recent information than I do, clearly. I wonder when the technology will come to Brookfield.

Newt

[ceo]

Elephants are indeed awesome. Sufficiently so that I actually have seriously mixed feelings about keeping them in zoos.

[sleepyworm.livejournal.com]

The main issue with having elephants in a zoo is that the average elephant can walk many, many miles a day. As many as 50 if they are looking for food. A zoo just doesn't have the space for elephants to the degree that they need. Modern zoos, more and more, are actually phasing out their elephant exhibits (as in not acquiring any additional elephants and keeping the ones they have until they die of old age).
I should qualify this information by saying I came by it via my girlfriend, who works for Prospect Park Zoo in Brooklyn. She is, obviously, far more up on zoo politics than I am.

[cos]

Zoos should become much bigger. Some of them are. I think even the San Diego "Wild Animal Park" (actually out near Escondido) that I went to a few months ago isn't really big enough.

[beth_leonard]

The SF zoo has no elephants, the Oakland zoo has them. Guess which one we visit more often?

Also, welcome back to the land of the post-tax-day living. How was your season?

--Beth

[c1.livejournal.com]

I'm really torn on the idea of keeping animals in zoos. On the one hand, it's a way for people to see animals that they'd likely never see in real life. I went to Costa Rica for three weeks, and you'd think in all the time I spent tramping around the jungle that I'd have seen a toucan. Indeed, the only one I saw was when I watched Larry King Live the night before I came home, where Jack Hannah was a guest and happened to bring one. To this day, I swear the buggers are hoaxes, invented by the ministry of tourism. But even hiring a naturalist didn't help: the closest thing was a toucanette. Related, but not the real Mc Coy.

Added to that is the very real threat of extinction. I don't have numbers in front of me, but there are animals that aren't doing well in the wild, and breeding programs run by zoos and aquariums are the only thing keeping them from falling off the edge of the earth.

Every once in awhile, we see news stories about Joe the Gorilla breaking free, or of an elephant that beat his handler to death in an unforseen fit of rage, and it makes me wonder if it's the ethical thing to do. I saw a black panther at the Dallas Aquarium a couple years ago, and the poor thing was pacing around in a glass enclosure that was no more than 100 square feet.

I know that in places like the NE Aquarium, many of their residents don't go far in the wild (most small reef fish tend to stick to a very small area-- in general not more than 100 feet or so) which probably makes places like that fairly humane: as an aside, they get plenty of food, vet care, and are basically free from predation.

But when I hear of the issues they have keeping larger animals enclosed, I have to wonder. Sure, there's certain species that adapt well (and some that even thrive) to captivity.
Are elephants that species? I'm not convinced.

[(Anonymous)]

Supporting populations that are dying in the wild is a major issue; when we were in Phoenix recently, we discovered that the zoo was the only known habitat for the Arabian oryx (which had been doing OK until (crude explanation) the sheiks started hunting from ATVs instead of quadrupeds). But elephants are especially touchy; certainly they're dramatic, but they may subject to additional diseases in captivity. We were in Calgary when their elephant's child died; the arguments over raising in captivity were ... heated.

/CHip

[c1.livejournal.com]

Similarly, I've heard that dolphins in captivity don't fare as well as those in the wild: as many as three years are clipped from their lifespan. (Typical lifespan for dolphins is about 20 years.)

Now, Myrtle, the green sea turtle in the NE Aquarium, is around 80 years old (they don't know for sure, but it's in that neighbourhood), and I'm not sure she'd be doing that well in the wild, so it would seem to be a species-by-species issue. Probably as important is that she's very adapted to life in the tank, and to that end, they've been teaching her various commands: when a diver makes a certain hand gesture, for example, it means "come here, and get some back scritches". You wouldn't necessarily think so, but turtle shells transmit scritches well-- I'll guess that's one of her favourite commands, judging from her apparently blissful reaction.