He-man » Taronga Zoo

He-man
27-08-2007

I saw on an old thread here somewhere that Patrick was wondering how He-Man, Taronga's former bull elephant got his name.

I'm almost certain that when he first went on display at Taronga that his name was Herman (at least that's what he was called in press clippings from the time), and Herman he was called for many years, until the Masters of the Universe thing arrived and some genius dubbed him He-Man.

Since then he was He-Man.

28-08-2007

thanks ara. i was absolutely POSITIVE that this elephant could not have been called he-man his entire life, since the masters of the universe only came about in the early to mid eighties and he-man was certainly a lot older than that!!

herman is not a great name for an elephant, but it is certainly a lot better than he-man!

just a note for the future: if you don't mind, try to locate the original thread rather than create an all new one (the search threads function is usually pretty effective) as its nice for all the members to be able to go back and pick up where the conversation was left off. when we create entirly new ones, we often end up repeating ourselves a lot more.

28-08-2007

Yeah, point taken patrick, I'll make sure I do that in future.

While I'm rabbiting on about Taronga's bull elephants, I'd like to record something here about He-Man's predecessor, Gandhi.

Gandhi came to Taronga in 1950, when I was 4 years old and lived there for the next 18 years. He was therefore the bull elephant of my childhood and I was tremendously impressed with him. These were the days when feeding by the public was permitted, so I always used to take him an apple. (I believe he came from Bullen's circus when he got a bit too hot to handle, but I'm not absolutely certain of that.)

He led a restricted existence, being continuously chained by both front feet to another long chain. He was chained outside during the day, and inside the elephant house at night. It seemed a bit overdone to me, as he was behind both a moat AND a stong steel fence.(Thank heavens elephants are not chained up all day like that now.)

His was a fairly miserable, monastic existence. He was never used to attempt a mating, as far as I am aware and he could only touch trunks with the females in the next yard, being separated from them by the swimming pool and a short race about 2 metres wide.

It was a classic case of a circus animal no longer wanted - a shame!

His skull is today in the Macleay Museum at Sydney Uni.