Photo of the Day #51: African Elephant

When we speak of "animal intelligence" chimpanzees and other primates often first come to mind, rats and pigeons used in lab tests coming in at a close second. If we just leave it with those examples, however, we ignore many animals that are highly intelligent but that aren't so easy to study or run tests on, the African Bush Elephant (Loxodonta africana) being one such creature (although we know all extant elephants to be highly intelligent, as well). While there might not be truth to "an elephant never forgets," they life in complex social groups and communicate with other elephants over long distances, also showing a strange curiosity about the bones of other elephants that they happen across. While the intelligence of these animals does require more study it is apparent that they're quite smart, which makes the fact that many of them live in inadequate zoo conditions all the more upsetting. The elephant pictured above is one of three elephants living at the Philadelphia Zoo that I photographed during a visit this past summer, living in cramped and outdated quarters with two other adults (a younger Indian Elephant was moved to a sanctuary in Tennessee after she was gored by one of the African Elephants). The zoo knew that its enclosure was inadequate, at best, but when plans for expanding the elephant exhibit were scrapped they looking into moving the elephants to another zoo. The last that I heard, the Maryland Zoo wouldn't take the elephants and so they three would be moved to a breeding facility in Pittsburgh, PA, although this doesn't seem to be in the best interests of the elephants either. Indeed, while "conservation" is often a feel-good word that is uttered when talking about the fate of these animals, they animals still won't be set free and their potential offspring will still be kept in zoos, conservation of actual elephants in Africa (or even the release of zoo elephants into sanctuaries) being a secondary concern.