Copenhagen Zoo, July 2009.
Another set of pictures from my visit to Copenhagen Zoo last Sunday.
I will never be comfortable watching the big old male, Chiang Mei. For decades I have seen him in his small indoor cell (spending 18 hours of 24 in it) and on the semi-circle outdoors enclosure, some 300 square metres of flat and densely packed grovel.
Now he lives in the new elephant exhibit at Copenhagen Zoo. The indoor quarters are better, the outdoor quarters too. But they are not that impressive. Thanks to experiments going on right now, trying to reintroduce the younger male Tonsak into the herd (I will describe this in a separate thread), Chiang Mei now seems to have both indoor male stables as well as the whole outdoor male enclosure (that can be divided into two) for himself, at least for most of the time.
But he still goes on showing the same type of stereotype behaviours as he has done for the last decades. Should we be surprised? Of course not. So the show goes on in the new exhibit, he stands on the same spot for ten minutes, taking one step forward and then one step backwards, taking one step forwards and then one step backwards ets etc. The whole time slightly bobbing his head. Then he will move ten or fifteen meters to another place and start to do the same.
Every time I watch him, I get just as irritated as the time before, when I listen to the comments of the visitors. Can you see the big elephant dance? Can you dance like him, sweetie? is the standard comment from people with little children. Elderly men comment on the size of Chiang Mei´s reproductive organ, which he often displays cracking jokes that make their spouses a bit uncomfortable. The average time they look at Chiang Mei, I would estimate to about one and a half minute.
