The Plight of Captive Elephants - Zoos
PAGE 1, Zoos |
Elephants are intelligent, highly social animals that in the wild, travel 30 plus miles a day in their close social groups foraging for food and water. This maintains their foot and overall health. When held in captivity, many zoos have inadequate housing space and concrete floors for them. This combination leads to painful foot infections, arthritis, and eventually osteomyelitis and a premature and excruciatingly painful death. To the right is Clara from the St. Louis zoo. She was euthanized in March, 2007 due to her foot problems. The zoo put sandals on her to try and ease her pain but if you will just look at her face, she is in agony. They refused, over the years, to send her to a sanctuary where she might have had a chance to live a more normal life.
Zoos often claim it is for the education of the public but all the public really sees is an elephant suffering and living a very unnatural elephant life. It is an education in the painful downfall of one of these majestic animals. Those that are not sensitive, probably don't have a clue that the elephant is in pain both psychologically and physically.
Many came from culls and were shipped to the US after seeing their whole family killed and it has been proven that they suffer from PTSD, just like humans! They grieve their dead.
And breeding programs are problematic. Although they state that it is for the preservation of the species, they will probably never be returned to the wild. And several of the captive bred babies have died, some from the herpes virus.
Zoos that don't have adequate space to provide many acres of natural habitat for elephants, need to close down their elephant exhibits and send their elephants to one of the two bona fide elephant sanctuaries in the United States:
The Elephant Sanctuary, Hohenwald, Tennessee
The Performing Animal Welfare Society, San Andreas, California. Both of these sanctuaries have at least 2,000 acres for the elephants to roam!
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