Bronx Zoo Happy the elephant 'unlawfully imprisoned' lawsuit claims

Jurek7 said:
More important is the Bronx Zoo runs lots of good conservation projects of wild elephants. Eles at Bronx are the only live representatives to reach 10 m or so people in the New York area. The groups should realize they make saving elephants more difficult. They should turn to more meaningful helping wild elephants. Unless they are human parasites, trying to make money off pestering a honest business.
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I've said it before and I'll say it again, animal rights groups don't really care about animals. Period.

(at their core in any case, I'm sure most of their supporters are simply misinformed people who genuinely think they're helping)

~Thylo
 
Jurek7 said:
Besides, the logical error inherent to the concept of 'non-human humans' will produce problems as soon as it is applied more widely. For example, when an elephant injures itself in the sanctuary. Any organization can appoint itself a legal representative of the elephant and sue the sanctuary in turn. I can think of dozens of such nonsense, comic or sad outcomes.
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Did you mean to right nonhuman persons? Because nonhuman human makes even less sense.
 
There's already a deeply-embedded culture of people working together on the "rights" side, each of whom have vest interests to protect. The Elephant Sanctuary loudly supports such groups in saying how much better elephants would live in their 3,000 acres. But they have a horse in this race too now; after buying this huge, huge acreage, their eight 44-71-year-old elephants are already elderly and won't be around forever. With very few new additions in the last five years, they stand to be in the embarrassing position of one day having 3,000 acres with no one to use them. They're ever-so-firmly "recruiting," but I've been pleased to see AZA affiliates send their elephants when necessary to other AZA affiliates.
 
AmbikaFan said:
There's already a deeply-embedded culture of people working together on the "rights" side, each of whom have vest interests to protect. The Elephant Sanctuary loudly supports such groups in saying how much better elephants would live in their 3,000 acres. But they have a horse in this race too now; after buying this huge, huge acreage, their eight 44-71-year-old elephants are already elderly and won't be around forever. With very few new additions in the last five years, they stand to be in the embarrassing position of one day having 3,000 acres with no one to use them. They're ever-so-firmly "recruiting," but I've been pleased to see AZA affiliates send their elephants when necessary to other AZA affiliates.
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The Elephant Sanctuary is an AZA certified facility, so it technically counts.
I wouldn't have too much of an issue with elephants who are to old to breed and/or have bred to the point where their genes are represented enough in the captive population being sent to these facilities, but it should be the zoos' decision, not animal rights activists', whether or not they should go there.
 
NVP said:
The Elephant Sanctuary is an AZA certified facility, so it technically counts.
I wouldn't have too much of an issue with elephants who are to old to breed and/or have bred to the point where their genes are represented enough in the captive population being sent to these facilities, but it should be the zoos' decision, not animal rights activists', whether or not they should go there.
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You're right on all counts. Keepers at multiple institutions have told me that there is real cooperation between the ES and other institutions and that ES has standardized it's protocols so much that other zoos now hire past employees. It's the sense of superiority that permeates the rights/sanctuary crowd that irks me. Ringling's Myesore is 72, and the National Zoo's Ambika is soon to be 71, so it's possible for elephants to do well in human care without huge acreage. To be fair, ES's Shirley is also soon 71, but she spent most of her years without 3,000 acres, so she essentially makes the same point.
 
I've always heard that Maxine and Patty were the aggressors to Happy and Sammie and Sammie's predecessor. Happy had lived successfully with multiple elephants for over 30 years when her last companion died around 2005. I once asked a former keeper if they had tried alternating the pairings every day, ie Patty and Happy one day, Maxine and Happy one day, thinking that perhaps it was the two-against-one that turned violent. I was told that Happy would be toast in any of the scenarios they tried. The recently retired head keeper said on The Zoo that he'd miss Happy most because she has the biggest heart. I don't think Happy's the problem.
 
AmbikaFan said:
Ringling's Myesore is 72, and the National Zoo's Ambika is soon to be 71, so it's possible for elephants to do well in human care without huge acreage. To be fair, ES's Shirley is also soon 71
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Off-topic question. Are these ages documented, for example by a series of historic photographs?

Elderly elephants suffer feeding complications from wear of their last set of teeth, already from their 40s. A 70-year old elephant is more likely a stage name, where in fact more different individuals substituted each other.
 
ThylacineAlive said:
I've said it before and I'll say it again, animal rights groups don't really care about animals. Period.

(at their core in any case, I'm sure most of their supporters are simply misinformed people who genuinely think they're helping)

~Thylo
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Do you have any basis for saying that?
 
Jurek7 said:
Off-topic question. Are these ages documented, for example by a series of historic photographs?

Elderly elephants suffer feeding complications from wear of their last set of teeth, already from their 40s. A 70-year old elephant is more likely a stage name, where in fact more different individuals substituted each other.
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Jurek7 said:
Off-topic question. Are these ages documented, for example by a series of historic photographs?

Elderly elephants suffer feeding complications from wear of their last set of teeth, already from their 40s. A 70-year old elephant is more likely a stage name, where in fact more different individuals substituted each other.
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I can only speak to Ambika. She was given to the children of the US by the children of India in 1962. She had been a logging elephant for 14 years. She came as a political gift of goodwill, so I would imagine there was some documentation given. Also, it wouldn't be too hard for keen-eyed animal enthusiasts like us to determine an elephant's age when not full-grown. NZP is not a circus so there was no need for bally or an exaggerated story with Ambika. BTW, years and locations of all tranfers are listed in the AZA studbook.

As of this summer, Ambika still had her last set of teeth, but keepers feed some meals away from speedeater Shanthi because Ambika eats slowly and would otherwise have her food stolen.
 
ThylacineAlive said:
Bronx has been named #1 on IDA's 10 Worst Zoos for Elephants.

~Thylo
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When Dallas Zoo is #3 is on that list, you know there are problems with it! Of course their issue was behind the scenes actions, like separating the elephants to move some to other zoos.
 
blospz said:
When Dallas Zoo is #3 is on that list, you know there are problems with it! Of course their issue was behind the scenes actions, like separating the elephants to move some to other zoos.
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Dallas has been featured on previous years as well. In the past it's been for them taking in some of those imported wild elephants even though they would have been shot dead otherwise. These groups love to remove all context in order to spin their agendas, however.

~Thylo
 
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