Asian Elephant multi-mixed species enclosures

OkapiJohn

OkapiJohn

Well-Known Member
Hello, I am feeling curious wondering if there are any mixed enclosures with asian elephants. I am conceptualizing an asian enclosure surrounded by a water moat (elephant proof). Which ungulates can live together with asian elephants? Bateng, gaur, axis deer, blackbuck? What about primate species? Which live mostly on the climbing structures and would be rather safe from the elephants.

Thank you everyone and I am sorry if this is repeating the same question someone made before.
 
I've always been under the impression that elephants are very hard to keep in mixed exhibits anyway.

The closest I've seen to a mixed exhibit with Asian Elephants is Whipsnade Zoo, where the elephants seemed pretty chill with the free-roaming Muntjac Deer wandering into their enclosure.
 
LA Zoo might attempt this for this vision plan as they're planning to expand the Elephants of Asia with an area where people can swim with elephants protected by a glass wall barrier and plan to mix and rotate Asian animals similar to Denver Zoo perhaps Asian hoofstock and Indian Rhinos would rotate with them.
 
Pairi Daiza tried Eld's deer bachelor group and blackbucks with the largest group of Asian elephants in the "reserve". However, I think some issues were encountered.
I do think exhibiting macaques with elephants would be doable, maybe even beneficial from an enrichment point of view (hamadryad baboons are mixed with elephants at Beekse Bergen) but the difficulty lie in building an efficient and nice exhibit barrier able to contain both species. When you take into account the space needed to properly exhibit elephants, the cost of such installation rise very quickly.

In my dreams, I have already thought about a presentation where elephants would live below gibbons, not really sharing the space (a bit Fuengirola-like but bigger). Anyhow, I think the design of the exhibit should avoid all possibility of interaction as elephants seems to be poor neighbors.
 
Therabu said:
Pairi Daiza tried Eld's deer bachelor group and blackbucks with the largest group of Asian elephants in the "reserve". However, I think some issues were encountered.
I do think exhibiting macaques with elephants would be doable, maybe even beneficial from an enrichment point of view (hamadryad baboons are mixed with elephants at Beekse Bergen) but the difficulty lie in building an efficient and nice exhibit barrier able to contain both species. When you take into account the space needed to properly exhibit elephants, the cost of such installation rise very quickly.

In my dreams, I have already thought about a presentation where elephants would live below gibbons, not really sharing the space (a bit Fuengirola-like but bigger). Anyhow, I think the design of the exhibit should avoid all possibility of interaction as elephants seems to be poor neighbors.
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When I visited Sosto Zoo in Hungary I’m sure they had gibbons above elephants in indoor enclosure!
 
Thank you everyone for your answers!
The EAZA elephant guidelines also provide some examples:
"A very good example is the African savannah exhibit in Boras Djurpark in Sweden. The herd without the bull is managed alongside African cape buffalo (Syncerus caffer), Grant zebra (Equus quagga boehmi), Sable antelope (Hippotragus niger), Blesbok (Damaliscus pygargus phillipsi), Common eland (Taurotragus oryx), Giraffe (Giraffa sp.), Ostrich (Struthio camelus), and Helmeted guineafowl (Numida meleagris). In Ouwehands Zoo, the African elephants are exhibited with red river hogs (Potamochoerus porcus) while in Thoiry and Peaugres Zoo they are mixed with warthogs (Phacochoerus africanus).
Asian elephants are also being kept more often in mixed exhibits, with many examples worldwide. For example, Asian elephants are successfully kept together with Chital (Axis axis) and Crab-eating macaques (Macaca fascicularis) in Dierenrijk Zoo and with Blackbucks (Antilope cervicapra) at Dublin Zoo. In Zurich Zoo, an all-male group of Blackbucks use whole outdoor exhibit space calmly in the presence of the elephants and retreat to their area when needed as their stable and a small outside exhibit are not accessible for the elephants. Although no real barrier exists, the blackbucks do not use the inside exhibits of elephants."

My Species list is:
Bateng
Asian Elephant
Burmese Brow antlered deer
François' Langur
The idea is an Indochinese fauna mixed enclosure.
 
Elephants, being intelligent and temperamental, can be quite vindictive. I remember reading a zoo insider's memoirs, who told of an elephant which deliberately left piles of food to attract ducks, and then would stomp them into oblivion. Mind you, there was a hippo in a mixed exhibit who bit off an elephant's trunk, as well.
 
GaryA said:
Elephants, being intelligent and temperamental, can be quite vindictive. I remember reading a zoo insider's memoirs, who told of an elephant which deliberately left piles of food to attract ducks, and then would stomp them into oblivion. Mind you, there was a hippo in a mixed exhibit who bit off an elephant's trunk, as well.
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I think that might have been an isolated elephant, or one in a very small group without normal social interaction
 
The only case of mixed species including elephants I am aware of is an elderly female who lives with a group of goats.
 
In the 1970s / 1980s Amersfoort - the Netherlands had a large colony of Black-tailed prairiedogs in ( and later also outside ) the Asian elephant enclosure. If I remember right they stopped this mix because the burrowing of the Prairiedogs became to dangerous for the elephants.
 
I cannot understand why people keep starting these totally pointless fantasy threads about putting wildly inappropriate animals together to the utter detriment of one species.

Haven't we had enough after the utterly stupid chimpanzee thread?

Enough people, please!
 
^Dude, chill out :rolleyes:

Anyway, though not necessarily Asian elephants, Lowry Park keeps African bush elephants with impala, and Dallas did mix elephants with other hoofstock, though they're now separated. Boras Zoo in Sweden also has Africans in a giant paddock along with a variety of other animals, including guineafowl, giraffes, cape buffalo, various antelopes, and more. It can be doable with the proper precautions, I'd say, but I'm not an elephant expert. They're already charismatic on their own, so I see no real need with mixing them with other species.
 
GaryA said:
I cannot understand why people keep starting these totally pointless fantasy threads about putting wildly inappropriate animals together to the utter detriment of one species.

Haven't we had enough after the utterly stupid chimpanzee thread?

Enough people, please!
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The detriment of who?? Multispecies enclosures can be very positive for the animals and for the visitors. For the animals it is an enrichment, having the possibility to share their lives with other animals of different species, which is something that happens in nature and it is important in case you want to release the animals back into the wild that they know to interact with other species. It is cognitively enriching to feel the smell of other animals, to hear their sounds, or even to play among them.
It is also good for the visitor because it shows which species share their habitats in nature and how they interact or occupy different niches.
I don't see why this is an issue for you since the best practices guidelines from EAZA for their multiple species always give recommendations about the benefits and risks of putting different species together, as well as which species and how.

And these are not pointless fantasies from people.
There are loads of scientific literature about mixed-species exhibits. Your statement is insulting to those that work and investigate hard about animal husbandry. Many of us actually work with these species and/or work in zoo management and having the possibility to reach a wide global community is an incredible and powerful tool to help to find the information we need!

But just for you to see, it seems that a lot of people around the world actually lose time and money about these fantasies:
 
I get it: not all combinations work. I am iffy with mixing most carnivorans with other animals, since we have a good number of incidents where things turn for the worse (I am not a fan of mixing canids with bears, or bears with other animals, or mixing otters with almost anything for example), but if done in an appropriate fashion then I see no problem with mixing compatible species. And as someone mentioned in that chimpanzee topic previously (I think), even individuals of the same social species can inflict injury or even death within a group.
 
Azamat Shackleford said:
I get it: not all combinations work. I am iffy with mixing most carnivorans with other animals, since we have a good number of incidents where things turn for the worse (I am not a fan of mixing canids with bears, or bears with other animals, or mixing otters with almost anything for example), but if done in an appropriate fashion then I see no problem with mixing compatible species. And as someone mentioned in that chimpanzee topic previously (I think), even individuals of the same social species can inflict injury or even death within a group.
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I hope you understand that the reply wasn't for you, but thanks for your wise words, you are completely right!
 
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