The Washington Post July 14, 2016

【For zoo elephants, social lives may be more important than space】 By karin Brulliard

There’s churning national conversation about the wolfare of animals in zoos, and one of the biggest debates is about elephants.

Infertility, obesity and shortened lives are common afflictions among the zoo populations of these highly social, intelligent and enormous animals. Scientists have pribed, in a limited way, how captivity affects them. some zoo managers have closed elephant exhibits, saying their facilities couldn’t adequately support the animal’s needs. Critics say elephants have no place in zoos at all.

Among the major concerns are limited exhibit space-elephants roam for miles in the wild -and social groupings that are much smaller and less complex than the matrilinear herds of wild elephants.

Now a sweeping, first-of-its-kind study of nearly all elephants at accredited zoos in North America has applied epidemiological reserch methods to extract information that has often been missing from these devates. And some og its findings published Thursday in PLOS One, are counterintuitive.

More than two dozen researchers, who gathered and analyzed data on 255 elephants at 68 zoos, found no link between the size of an exhibit and three key indicators of poor elephant welfare:obesity, repetitive rocking or swaying. Elephants that walkied more each day, as measured by GPS recoedings, were no less likely to be obese than their sedentary counterparts, said the lead author of the study’s overview, Cheryl Meehan, who is a research associate for the School of Veterimary Medicine at the University of California at Davis and executive director of the Animal Welfare, Reserch and Education Institute.

There’s a churning national conversation about the welfare ofanimals in zoos, and one of the biggest debates is about elephants.

Infertility, obesity and shortened lives are common afflictionsamong the zoo populations of these highly social, intelligent and enormousanimals. Scientists have probed, in a limited way, how captivity affects them.Some zoo managers have closed elephant exhibits, saying their facilitiescouldn’t adequately support the animals’ needs. Critics say elephants have noplace in zoos at all.

Among the major concerns are limited exhibit space — elephantsroam for miles in the wild — and social groupings that are much smaller andless complex than the matrilinear herds of wild elephants.

[Humans are at war with nature, and zoo animals are the‘refugees’]

Now a sweeping, first-of-its-kind study of nearly all elephants ataccredited zoos in North America has applied epidemiological research methodsto extract information that has often been missing from these debates. And someof its findings, published Thursday in PLOS One, are counterintuitive.

More than two dozen researchers, who gathered and analyzed data on255 elephants at 68 zoos, found no link between the size of an exhibit andthree key indicators of poor elephant welfare: obesity, reproduction problemsor “stereotypical behavior,” such as repetitive rocking or swaying. Elephantsthat walked more each day, as measured by GPS recordings, were no less likelyto be obese than their sedentary counterparts, said the lead author of thestudy’s overview, Cheryl Meehan, who is a research associate for the School ofVeterinary Medicine at the University of California at Davis and executivedirector of the Animal Welfare, Research and Education Institute.

To measure space, the researchers looked at zoos’ total elephanthabitat sizes, which ranged from about 7,700 to 347,000 square feet, but alsocreated a new metric to account for the fact that individual elephants usespace differently from one another. They called this “Space Experience,” and itranged from 1,200 to 170,000 square feet per animal.

“This was really surprising,” Meehan said. “This adds a twist tothe current narrative, which is heavily biased toward this idea of more andmore space is necessary and better.”

Instead, she said, the researchers found that the quality of thespace was “extremely important.” Diverse enrichment activities and feedingmethods — such as hanging or hiding food rather than plopping hay on the ground— were more closely linked to signs of positive welfare, particularlyreproductive health. Hard floors were linked to musculo-skeletal and footproblems, as well as less lying down among African elephants, which the authorssurmised could lead to sleep deprivation.

Big, stable and diverse social groups seem to be better forAfrican and Asian zoo elephants of both genders. Elephants in those kinds ofgroups performed fewer repetitive behaviors such as rocking, Meehan said, whilethose that spent more time in isolation performed more.

Stereotypical behaviors can indicate poorer current welfare, butthey can also “be a scar, if you will, of past experiences,” Meehan said.That’s relevant for another of the study’s findings: Elephants that had been transferredmore times from one zoo to another displayed more stereotypical behavior.

“The physical, actual move can be stressful, but [the researchers]also point to the disruption in social life with respect to social bonds withelephants they were living with and also human caretakers,” Meehan said. “Sothe social piece is really deeply woven into the question about elephantwelfare.”

Ron L. Kagan, executive director of the Detroit Zoo who more thana decade ago closed that zoo’s elephant exhibit because of concerns about spaceand cold climate, said the study is an important contribution to scientificliterature on animal welfare in zoos. But he said he thinks its findings aboutexhibit size could be misleading. When it comes to elephants, which can roamdozens of miles each day in the wild, zoo space is always insufficient, hesaid.

[Zoos will ‘look and act radically different in 20 years’]

“The problem is that we are using space in human terms, which foran elephant is an irrelevant scale,” Kagan said. “If we double the size of ahouse for a human, that is a huge difference. If you double the size of anenvironment for an elephant from half an acre to an acre, or from an acre totwo acres, that’s irrelevant. … I think the conclusion may make people thinkthat it’s not important, when in fact the problem is we’re not talking aboutspace in the right way.”

He said the study’s broad focus also meant “it can’t reveal one ofthe most important questions of all, which is: Are elephants happy incaptivity? And that’s what we need to get to.”

Meehan, too, characterized the research as a jumping-off point fordecisions about elephant care, and one she said she hopes will add science tothe debate that has been lacking in it. Zoo animal care, as the study’soverview paper said, is “still more of an art than evidence-based.”

The data for the study was gathered in 2012, mostly by theparticipating zoos. They took videos that researchers used to assess elephantbehavior, sent weekly blood and fecal samples that were used to measurephysiological indicators of stress, and provided detailed descriptions ofelephant exercise, feeding, health, exhibit space and other managementinformation. Meehan said the zoos’ role in providing the data could be viewedas a limitation, but it was the only way to give the research such a wide scope,and the diversity of data received indicated that it was strong.

The findings, she said, suggest zoos should consider more diversefeeding methods and activities for elephants in the short term — both thingsthat don’t require major infrastructure changes. In the long term, she said,they should “move toward larger herds so that we can support the social needsof the elephants.”

An earlier version of this article incorrectlyreported that space-per-elephant size among those studied ranged from 1,200 to17,000 square feet. It has been corrected to report total exhibit sizes andwhat the researchers called “Space Experience.”