This made my day!

July 2009, a series of five pictures.

The perhaps greatest experience when I visited Copenhagen Zoo last Sunday, was seeing young male Tonsak reunited with at least a part of the herd!

The story goes like this:

In 2001, Thailand gave three young elephants to Denmark (a gift between the two royal courts of these countries). Three years old all three of them: the male Tonsak and two females named Surin and Kungarau. I like to think of the females as his sisters but that is not the case.

At first, the trio was housed in the old giraffe enclosure and were taken for walks around the zoo. They appeared pretty happy and playful, as far as I could see. After a year or so, they were introduced to the herd in the elephant exhibit and started to live with them. However, after only a couple of years Tonsak was expelled from the herd. For some reason the females did not tolerate him anymore. This had the effect that for at least a couple of years, until the new elephant exhibit was finally ready, poor Tonsak was confined 22 hours a day in a perhaps 40 or 50 square meter big cage in the old dark and damp elephant house. Two hours a day, he was let out on into the herd´s outdoor enclosure, circa 500 square metres of densely packed gravel. I hated seeing him held under these horrible conditions and could not wait for the new exhibit to be ready!

Now he is 11 years old and the zoo is trying to re-introduce him to the herd. I suppose that is the bigger space, both indoors and outdoors, that could make it possible. Forumster Toddy has told us about this and I have had e-mail correspondence with the zoo about it. But last Sunday was the first time I saw it with my own eyes!

I arrived to the zoo at noon and headed for the elephant exhibit. To my great joy I saw Tonsak out there in the herd outdoor enclosure together with his “sisters”. All three obviously getting along just fine. I would guess that they had been let out around 10 o´clock. Two and a half hoors later they were let inside the house and the rest of the herd, the two close to 40 year old females and the young male calf replaced Tonsak & Co in the outdoor enclosure.

I then watched Tonsak, Surin and Kungarau spending the afternoon in the big indoor herd enclosure, looking for food in the sand and continuing to get along just fine.

I suppose that the idea is to try and re-introduce Tonsak with the rest of the herd as well and I so much hope that the zoo will have success in doing so. It would mean that Tonsak could spend another few years with the herd until he is “finally expelled” and will have to go and live out the rest of his life in the male section of the elephant exhibit, which is far less good than the one for the herd.

And then, he and old Chiang Mei will again have to share this section that is so terribly disappointing, especially given the fact that it is brand new! Two indoors stalls of abut 150 square meters big each, two outdoors enclosures about 400 or 500 square metres big each (appr. ten times smaller than what would be legally allowed in Sweden). And for about 90 percent the male outdoor enclosures are surrounded by concrete walls, to tall to give the animals an outlook to the surroundings.

At least, as long as only one male is confined to the male section, conditions are somewhat better since he can use the two stalls and the two outdoor enclosures for himself.

Nice update Dan! There are some great enrichment ideas (large pool, herd, sand) at this year-old exhibit, but what do you think about the size of the main elephant enclosure? It would be considered puny in the United States and several other countries.

It is shamefully small, of course. Some 2000+ square meters or about half an acre...

The Woodland Park Zoo has come under fire for its elephant program, and its almost 1.5 acre exhibit has often been criticized for being too small. However, compared to zoos like Taronga (Sydney) or Copenhagen I think that the elephant paddock in Seattle is triple the size of either of those others. I'm frankly quite amazed that the Copenhagen zoo would open a multi-million dollar pachyderm exhibit that is only half an acre in size. The Taronga zoo also has a similarly sized paddock, and they have a new baby elephant and are expecting more babies in the future! How do they expect to have enough space?

Dan, there is no reason to believe that Tonsak will have to be kept in total isolation ever again. My guess is that he was rejected by the 2 older females, older, dominant females usually don`t like young bulls and the other way around. Seems like they still keep him seperated from those 2. But if he is now coming along with Surin and Kungrao, there is no reason why that should ever change. There are many zoos who keep adult bulls with the females and calves on a daily basis. I very much hope Chieng Mai will be allowed to go into the big herd enclosure with the females too soon. There is just no reason to keep him permanently seperated since he is old and strong enough to be dominant over all of the females.

Yassa, I so much hope that you are right! However, as far as I have understood, there are no plans whatsoever to try to integrate Chiang Mei with the herd. And after four decades of him kept alone that probably makes sense.

The one and only good news about Chiang Mei is that he will eventually be let out - alone - into the herd enclosure. This is what I have been told via e-mails from the zoo. Will he dare to go into the water and take a bath - an experience that he has never known of?

Probably not, I am afraid. Actually I have never seen the two old females ever dare to go into the water - only the "young ones from Thailand" and the calf do it.

I guess that decades and decades of confinement to concrete cells 18 hours a day, spending only 6 hours a day on a 500 sq meter outdoor enclosure of densley packed gravel, has robbed the wonderful, but older, animals of any self-confidence that they may have possesed.

Nothing would please me more than if somebody could contradict me here! Has anyone ever seen the two 40-year old females go into the water?

No, that is not true. The matriarch Inda will not have him there. She allows him to breed with the other females when they are in heat but that is it. Tonsak is currently being reintroduced to Kungrao and Surin for breeding purposes and then the zoo will take it from there.

However, it seems to have become the common belief here that Chieng Mai is never allowed in the female exhibit. I have already explained earlier on this forum that Chieng Mai has indeed been granted access to the females' exhibit while they were indoors on several occasions. It is also the plan for him to spend more time there without the females, especially on the long summer evenings.

Toddy, you are without a doubt the authority at ZooChat when it comes to Copenhagen Zoo. But in my e-mail enquiries with the zoo a couple of months ago, I was informed that Chieng Mai had never been let out into the bigger enclosure. I wrote a follow-up e-mail but got no answer.

Are you really sure that he has been in the bigger enclosure?

That is what I was told by a staff member of the animal division at the zoo. I have not seen it myself yet.