Demand improvements to the elephant exhibit at the Toronto Zoo
Colleen Perrin wrote to me a month ago or so with her concerns about the treatment of elephants at the Toronto Zoo. Although the life expectancy of Toronto’s elephants is the same as that of wild elephants, there are concerns that it should be higher, since zoo elephants do not face dangers such as droughts and poaching. The matriarch elephant was recently euthanized due to pain from a bone cyst, and there is reason to believe that lack of winter exercise and socialization may be a contributing factor. Colleen is asking everyone to find out more at:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/the-long-goodbye-of-the-toronto-zoo-elephants-1.1894496
and then to write a letter asking for improvements to the elephant exhibit.
| — Adriana Mugnatto-Hamu on 2006 Sep 4 in Actions |
There’s a long article in the New York Times Magazine that suggests that elephants in the wild are suffering a species-wide nervous breakdown: https://myaccount.nytimes.com/auth/login?URI=www-nc.nytimes.com/2006/10/08/magazine/08elephant.html&REFUSE_COOKIE_ERROR=SHOW_ERROR
And another article that suggests that elephants are one of the few species (like humans, chimpanzees, and dolphins on a good day) who are self-aware enough to recognize themselves in a mirror: https://www.livescience.com/4272-elephant-awareness-mirrors-humans.html