{"id":6097,"date":"2004-05-20T13:42:11","date_gmt":"2004-05-20T20:42:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/2004\/05\/20\/free-dumbo.html"},"modified":"2004-05-20T13:42:11","modified_gmt":"2004-05-20T20:42:11","slug":"free_dumbo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2004\/05\/20\/free_dumbo.html","title":{"rendered":"Free Dumbo?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Groups like PETA have done such damage to the animal rights cause that it’s almost tempting to have a knee-jerk reaction against assertion of such rights. But reading about the Detroit Zoo shutting down its elephant exhibit<\/a> does give one pause.<\/p>\n

The Detroit Zoo will become the first major zoo to stop exhibiting elephants on ethical grounds because they can develop arthritis and stress-related ailments in captivity, officials said on Thursday.
\nThe Detroit Zoo has one of the largest facilities in the country, but its Asian elephants Winky and Wanda still have recurring foot problems due to the cold weather, Director Ron Kagen told Reuters.
\nIn the wild, elephants roam vast areas, live in large families, and exhibit some of the same social traits as humans such as forming friendships and mourning for their dead. “Elephants seem to be intelligent and even social in ways that are similar to humans,” Kagen said. “Elephants can suffer from similar things to what we suffer from when we’re in difficult environments.”
\nConfined to zoos and circuses, elephants develop physical problems and neurotic behaviors such as rocking back and forth and aggressive behavior, he said.
\n“If we don’t feel like we can (keep elephants), then the question is, who can and how?,” he said. “For us, there really is a big question about whether elephants should be in captivity at all.”<\/p>\n

It will be interesting to see whether this becomes more of a trend. Certainly zoos have been under a lot of pressure to upgrade their facilities to more natural and less stressful enclosures, and most decent-sized institutions have done so.<\/p>\n

But if the nature of a particular animal is such that any sort of reasonable enclosure is going to lead to physical and emotional health problems, can one justify keeping that animal in any zoo?<\/p>\n

Presumably larger “preserve”-style institutions could continue to keep their elephants in captivity — the San Diego Wild Animal Park <\/a>comes to mind — but the day of elephants in large (but still confined) spaces in zoos may be numbered.<\/p>\n

And that may not be such a bad thing, even if it means it’s less likely that Katherine will be able to see one in person.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Groups like PETA have done such damage to the animal rights cause that it’s almost tempting to have a knee-jerk reaction against assertion of such rights. But reading about the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6097","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":38343,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2013\/07\/23\/have-seen-many-elephants-and-z.html","url_meta":{"origin":6097,"position":0},"title":"Have seen many elephants and z…","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 23-Jul-13 11:30pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Have seen many elephants and zebras. Also many G&Ts... can't be too careful about malaria!","rel":"","context":"In "~Tweets"","block_context":{"text":"~Tweets","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/tweets"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10073,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2006\/09\/09\/beer_foamy.html","url_meta":{"origin":6097,"position":1},"title":"Beer foamy","author":"***Dave","date":"Sat 9-Sep-06 11:59am","format":false,"excerpt":"Went last night with Margie on ... a date! Yes, we went off to the Denver Zoo \"Brew at the Zoo\" soiree, something we've not done before, but which we'll...","rel":"","context":"In "Food & Drink"","block_context":{"text":"Food & Drink","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/food-drink"},"img":{"alt_text":"brew_2006.jpg","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/images\/brew_2006.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":49701,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2015\/02\/26\/exploring-abandoned-worlds.html","url_meta":{"origin":6097,"position":2},"title":"Exploring abandoned worlds","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 26-Feb-15 11:58am","format":false,"excerpt":"I hadn't considered this application for drone technology, but it's an interesting way to look at abandoned places (in this case Belle Isle Zoo in Detroit, closed since 2002) that doesn't involve risk of life or limb (or trespassing charges). Originally shared by +Les Jenkins: View on Google+","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":130545,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2016\/05\/02\/the-end-of-the-ringling-elephants.html","url_meta":{"origin":6097,"position":3},"title":"The End of the Ringling Elephants","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 2-May-16 4:27pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Net-net to the good; even if the allegations repeatedly raised about Ringling's elephant handling were untrue, this does not seem to be a healthy life for the elephants.Still, and stripped away from other (certainly non-trivial) considerations, there's something nostalgically wistful about this end of an era. \"Circus\" and \"elephant\" have\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":30097,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/09\/05\/blood-ivory.html","url_meta":{"origin":6097,"position":4},"title":"Blood ivory","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 5-Sep-12 7:33pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Poaching of elephant ivory -- and thus slaughter of elephants -- in Africa is back at epidemic proportions, driven by massive new demand from a more prosperous China and exploitation by rebel (and government) armed forces. \u00a0Sad. Embedded Link Africa\u2019s Elephants Are Being Slaughtered in Poaching Frenzy Conservation groups say\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":44041,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2014\/08\/01\/capybabies.html","url_meta":{"origin":6097,"position":5},"title":"Capybabies!","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 1-Aug-14 8:58am","format":false,"excerpt":"TEH CUTEZ!(Oddly enough, capybaras came up in conversation last night. Don't recall why.)(h\/t Stan)\ufeff Five Baby Capybaras Born at Zoo Berlin - ZooBorns Zoo Berlin recently welcomed five baby Capybaras to their South American exhibit! Born just several weeks ago, the five pups, along with mother, Lucia, explored their enclosure\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6097","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6097"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6097\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}