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 has 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 fra