s spent millions of years patrolling the parched African landscape following ancient mental maps to water sources, it’s no wonder that swimming pools and mud wallows are a big hit with our elephants. On warm days, guests can be treated to views of the Park’s younger elephants cavorting about in the pool, spraying each other with trunks full of water and horsing around with their friends in the sun.
Elephants both in the wild and in zoos often rub their tusks against hard surfaces, which sometimes damages them. Elephant youngster Khosi, born at the Park in September 2006, wore down her tusks over time, so in 2011 our veterinary team performed a pulpotomy, which is like a root canal on a tusk, and then placed permanent stainless-steel caps on each of her tusks to prevent further wear. The procedure went well, thanks to intense planning, training and desensitizing the elephant, and collaboration among the Park’s keepers and veterinary staff.
At the Park, you may see some of the elephants wearing an anklet accelerometer, which is essentially a high-tech pedometer measuring step count and activity, as part of our Elephant Walking Study. Additionally, some of the elephants are trained to wear a collar around their neck that holds a GPS unit and a digital infrasonic recorder. This research will expand to the Zoo, and then to other zoos around the country to help us gather as much accurate activity and behavioral data as possible, which will ensure that elephants in zoos receive the best, most appropriate care possible.
Elephants have been hunted relentlessly for their tusks (even though they’re made of dentine, the same as our teeth). Elephants are now protected, but poachers still hunt them, and they face other problems, too. Because they are so big and need so much food, they can eat themselves out of “house and home.” Elephants and people often come into conflict as elephant habitats undergo dramatic reductions in size. Asian and African forest elephants are listed as endangered, primarily due to habitat loss and fragmentation. African bush elephants are threatened, primarily due to habitat loss and being poached for their tusks.
We are actively promoting the conservation of elephants through a variety of methods aimed at understanding elephant behavior and their reproductive biology in their natural habitats and in zoos. We can apply the knowledge we gain studying the elephants at the San Diego Zoo and San Diego Zoo Safari Park to help sustain elephants in their native environments. In one multidisciplinary approach, our scientists record elephant auditory communication and behavior for a clearer understanding of the social dynamics of a herd and the relationship between mother and calf. In another, we’re recording and plotting calf weights as a measure of health.
To promote genetic diversity, we’re sharing bull elephant semen with other facilities in an effort to enhance the gene pool of managed populations. To further reproductive success, we are monitoring hormones to uncover the details of the complex estrous cycle of elephants. At the Safari Park, we are studying how many miles our elephants move each day by having select individuals wear specially designed pedometers. Eventually, results will be compared between individual animals, zoos, and even what has been documented in nature to see if zoo elephants get enough exercise.
Partnerships and collaborations. We continue to financially support field conservation efforts in Swaziland and are working with the Northern Rangelands Trust to preserve large tracts of land in Kenya and helping local ecologists and rangers reduce human-elephant conflict in the area. In the past, we have partnered with the Pinnewala Elephant Orphanage in Sri Lanka, where Asian elephants are managed in conditions very similar to that of their wild counterparts.
The small country of Botswana is home to the largest contiguous wild elephant population remaining on the African continent. San Diego Zoo Global has partnered with the nonprofit Elephants Without Borders (EWB) to delve further into researc