 grow older. By the time they are two to three years old, they no longer need to nurse.
AT THE ZOO
Empress and Queenie were the San Diego Zoo’s first elephants, arriving here in 1923 via train from San Francisco. After being led off the train, the two Asian elephants refused to move another step, no matter how much encouragement they received. The Zoo’s founder, Harry Wegeforth, M.D., was there to greet them, and it occurred to him that they were probably used to being ridden, so he climbed up on Empress and another staff member did the same with Queenie, and off they walked from the train station to the Zoo, gathering many astonished looks along the way!
Peaches was the San Diego Zoo’s first African elephant—and she made sure to be a memorable one, too. When she arrived in 1953, she was three years old, smart, curious, and, as then ZOONOOZ editor Ken Stott described her, “playful as a quarter-ton kitten.” She had made the journey from Africa to San Diego with keeper Ralph “Gabe” Davis, and they got along famously—at least most of the time. When Gabe gave her breakfast, she would grumble and trumpet at him until he left her alone to eat—apparently, she was not sociable in the morning. She also showed a marked preference for men, even pushing away Zoo Executive Director Belle Benchley when she tried to say hello. Peaches did become more mellow as she grew up, but even as an adult, she still had a way of “flirting” with men while more often than not giving women a cool stare.
Since that time, we've had numerous elephants at our two facilities, and our first elephant birth occurred in 1981. In 1971, Asian elephant Carol became famous by appearing on The Tonight Show with the Zoo’s animal ambassador Joan Embery, to meet Johnny Carson and paint for him while millions watched nationwide!
Today, four elephants live in the Zoo’s Elephant Odyssey habitat. Its features include the state-of-the-art Elephant Care Center, which is helpful, as our herd is made up of older, non-breeding elephants at this time. Two of them—Mary and Devi—are Asian elephants and the other two—Tembo and Shaba—are African bush elephants.
Tembo (Swahili for elephant) has lived at the Zoo for much of her life. Before we adopted her, she was an animal actor, and appeared in the TV series Born Free as—you guessed it—a baby elephant! We think she was born around 1972, and her official birthday is the first of January. In fact, most of our elephants have the same birthday. As most were orphaned or rescued in the wild, we can only estimate their ages. So, we use the same system as racehorse owners. On New Year's Day, they all officially become a year older!
At the Safari Park, a herd of seven African elephants, born in Kruger National Park in South Africa in 1991, was translocated to Swaziland in 1994. Yet just a few years later, they were scheduled to be culled due to overpopulation. Fortunately, the herd instead was brought to San Diego on a truly "jumbo" plane in August 2003. A fellow herd-mate from Africa followed in October 2009, by way of the Lowry Park Zoo in Tampa, Florida. These elephants are one of the most genetically valuable African elephant herds in North America. Since their arrival at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park, their numbers have grown. The success of this group at the Safari Park helped earn us the Association of Zoos and Aquariums’ 2014 award for significantly enhancing the conservation of a species.
In March 2012, five of those elephants were moved to the Reid Park Zoo in Arizona to start a new herd. Today, the Safari Park is home to 13 African bush elephants: 5 adults and 8 calves of varying ages. Our newest calf, Qinisa, was born on August 28, 2012.
To best manage the elephants’ health at both the Zoo and the Safari Park, these behemoths are trained to present various body parts to keepers for inspection and care. Whether daintily presenting a foot, patiently standing parallel to the bars for a cleaning, or offering up their trunk for a saline flush, these animals are clearly highly cognizant and deserve the best care.
As a species that ha