12

Elephants in Captivity

Catherine Doyle

Much of the current debate over the welfare of captive elephants centers on
the deprivations and harms caused by their confinement. In zoos and cir-
cuses, elephants endure varying degrees of social and psychological dep-
rivation, physical deterioration, suffering, and premature death. Far less
attention is given to what it means when self-aware beings are unable to
fully engage in the seminal activities that define individual identities, rela-
tionships, and cultural experiences—activities that may be among the most
important components of elephants’ lives, providing purpose, depth, and
meaning.
When I first observed free-living elephants in Africa, the essential differ-
ence between them and the elephants I had seen in captivity was quite clear
to me: free-living elephants have a sense of purpose in their everyday lives
that elephants in captivity lack. I watched large elephant families—some-
times joined by a roving male who meticulously checked females in search
of one in estrus—move across the savanna to favored foraging areas where
they carefully selected and consumed a diversity of vegetation. A matriarch
traveling with her large family communicated via infrasonic sound (which
humans cannot hear), causing the group to suddenly freeze in unison, until
she inaudibly communicated once again, and the family members simul-
taneously resumed their trek. An elephant’s day is replete with continuing

C. Doyle 
Performing Animal Welfare Society, San Andreas, CA, USA
e-mail: cdoyle@pawsweb.org

© The Author(s) 2018 181

A. Linzey and C. Linzey (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Practical Animal Ethics,
The Palgrave Macmillan Animal Ethics Series,
https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-36671-9_12
182     C. Doyle

intellectual challenges, from remembering the location of water holes dur-

ing a drought to deciding which elephants to join or avoid to discriminating
“between the individual scents, voices and appearances of hundreds of famil-
iar and unfamiliar individuals.”1
Compared to the vibrancy of natural habitats where elephants are con-
stantly on the move, active in mind and body for at least twenty out of every
twenty-four hours, the world of captivity is monochrome and monotonous.
Operators of captive facilities claim to provide everything that elephants
require, by removing the need to search for food and water and eliminat-
ing the need to locate mates by employing artificial insemination. Circuses
even claim that trucking elephants from city to city for performances satis-
fies their need to roam.2 Given the formative depth of elephants’ experiences
in their natural habitats, we may never fully understand just how much cap-
tivity distorts the true nature of elephants by “relieving” them of these needs
and challenges.
For the purposes of this chapter, discussion of elephant captivity is lim-
ited to zoos and circuses. Sanctuaries for elephants relocated from zoos and
circuses are also places of confinement for elephants, but they do not sup-
port the captivity, breeding, or importation of elephants. These regretta-
bly few facilities seek to mitigate the deprivations of captive elephants by
offering more expansive and natural environments and greater autonomy.
Thus, elephants can forage for preferred fresh vegetation, move where they
please, engage in activities of their choice, and determine social partners
and their positions within a group. Even so, sanctuaries recognize that
captivity is inherently limited. Elephants must still be trained and man-
aged, and aspects of their lives controlled. The late Pat Derby, cofounder of
the USA’s first elephant sanctuary, the Performing Animal Welfare Society
(PAWS), once stated, “All I can do is make their prison as comfortable as
possible.”3

1J. H. Poole and P. Granli, “Mind and Movement: Meeting the Interests of Elephants,” in An Elephant

in the Room: The Science and Well-Being of Elephants in Captivity, ed. D. L. Forthman et al. (North
Grafton, MA: Tufts Center for Animals and Public Policy, 2009), 3.
2D. Nelson, “The Cruelest Show on Earth,” Mother Jones, November/December 2011, 56.

3P. Vitello, “Pat Derby, Champion of Animal Welfare, Dies at 69,” New York Times, February 22, 2013,

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/22/us/pat-derby-crusader-for-animals-dies-at-69.html?_r=0.
 12  Elephants in Captivity     183

Space and Sociality

No captive space can compare to the natural home ranges of free-roaming

elephants. This is not just a matter of less room to roam or the need for
artificial enrichment of monotonous spaces. Captive enclosures inherently
deprive elephants of the complex environments necessary for physical and
mental stimulation and for the extended social structures that nourish their
development, cognition, and culture. Elephants are large-brained, intel-
ligent, and long-lived mammals whose daily life “is distinguished by need,
purpose, challenge, choice, will, autonomy and camaraderie”4—fundamen-
tal elements of elephants’ lives that are virtually absent in captivity. Some
zoos are creating larger spaces (relative to traditional zoo spaces), even
designing larger preserve-type facilities that may help to improve welfare on
some levels, but these spaces still fail to address the most profound aspects of
elephants’ physical, mental, and social abilities.
Free-ranging elephants live in exceptionally large social networks. They
form close and enduring relationships, while at the same time navigating
a fluid social system in which elephant families temporarily separate and
reunite and mix with other social groups to create larger social aggrega-
tions.5 Because elephants are unusually long-lived, with life spans ranging
from sixty to seventy years,6 their social relationships are long-lasting and
extremely important to them.
Social relationships radiate out from the mother-offspring unit to the
family and beyond, to larger group associations, to independent adult males,
and to the larger population. In Kenya’s Amboseli National Park, social
knowledge extends to almost all other elephants within a population of
about 1200 individuals. Male and female calves share similar social experi-
ences within the family, but as adults their lives diverge. Female elephants
remain with their families throughout their lives, while male elephants dis-
perse from the family group at puberty (about age fourteen).7 Zoos and

4Poole and Granli, “Mind and Movement,” 7.

5J. H. Poole and C. J. Moss, “Elephant Sociality and Complexity,” in Elephants and Ethics: Toward
a Morality of Coexistence, ed. C. Wemmer and C. A. Christen (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 2008), 71.
6B. L. Hart, L. A. Hart, and N. Pinter-Wollman, “Large Brains and Cognition: Where Do Elephants

Fit In?,” Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews 32 (2008): 89.

7P. C. Lee and C. J. Moss, “Welfare and Well-Being of Captive Elephants: Perspectives from Wild

Elephant Life Histories,” in An Elephant in the Room: The Science and Well-Being of Elephants in
Captivity, ed. D. L. Forthman et al. (North Grafton, MA: Tufts Center for Animals and Public Policy,
2009), 24–31.
184     C. Doyle

circuses persist in stating that male elephants are asocial, but in nature
they form associations with other males and regularly mingle with female
groups.8
To maintain individual contact in such a dynamic and widely dispersed
social network, elephants have developed complex systems of communica-
tion that involve both long- and short-distance signaling and the identifica-
tion of conspecifics, using a broad variety of sounds, chemical signals, vision,
touch, and seismic vibrations.9 Elephants are known to have excellent audi-
tory discrimination, recognizing the calls of about one hundred other ele-
phants from various families and clans and possessing an extensive memory
of others’ calls.10 They also have highly developed long-term olfactory mem-
ory11 and can distinguish up to thirty individuals through olfactory cues
found in elephant urine.12
Their combination of social complexity and high intelligence has almost
certainly made elephants more likely to suffer in captivity, especially in
socially limited conditions.13 Some zoos and circuses hold female ele-
phants in isolation; here, keepers claim to act as substitute “herd mates”
for them.14 Male elephants are most often kept alone, despite their social
natures. Elephant standards set by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums
(AZA) and similar organizations permit an arbitrary minimum number of
elephants, with no supporting scientific evidence. For example, AZA stand-
ards allow zoos to keep just three elephants of mixed gender.15 There are no
standards for circuses. Despite female elephants’ need for social stability and

8Lee and Moss, “Welfare and Well-Being,” 27.

9Poole and Granli, “Mind and Movement,” 13; Caitlin E. O’Connell-Rodwell, “Keeping an Ear to
the Ground: Seismic Communication in Elephants,” Physiology 22 (2007): 287–94, doi:10.1152/
physiol.00008.2007.
10K. McComb et al., “Unusually Extensive Networks of Vocal Recognition in African Elephants,”

Animal Behavior 59 (2000): 1103–9.

11J. Arvidsson, M. Amundin, and M. Laska, “Successful Acquisition of an Olfactory Discrimination

Test by Asian Elephants, Elephas maximus,” Physiology and Behavior 105 (2012): 813–14.
12L. A. Bates et al., “African Elephants Have Expectations about the Locations of Out-of-Sight Family

Members,” Biology Letters 4 (2008): 34–36, doi:10.1098/rsbl.2007.0529.

13J. Veasey, “Concepts in the Care and Welfare of Captive Elephants,” International Zoo Yearbook 40

(2006): 70.
14J. E. Oosterhuis, Elephant Consultation Report for Edmonton Valley Zoo, Edmonton, Alberta, for Female

Asian Elephant “Skanik” (aka “Lucy”) (February 4, 2013), 9, http://www.edmonton.ca/attractions_

events/documents/Veterinary_update_2013.pdf.
15Association of Zoos and Aquariums, “AZA Standards for Elephant Management and Care,” accessed

January 12, 2014, http://www.elephanttag.org/Professional/Revised_AZA_Standards_Elephant_

Management_Care_April2012.pdf.
 12  Elephants in Captivity     185

continuity, zoos exchange elephants constantly, and circuses typically chain

and separate females from one another, inhibiting social interaction. Some
females may spend their lives devoid of contact with other elephants.
In zoos and circuses, elephants are deprived of normal social experiences
essential to elephants’ natural lives and the foundation of their physical and
mental development. Calves born in circuses are separated from their moth-
ers at a very young age and harshly trained to perform tricks. Those born
in zoos have been separated from their mothers at as young as one year old.
Males rarely stay with their mothers until the time they would naturally dis-
perse from the family. Calves born in captivity are usually deprived of nor-
mative social experiences such as play, interactions with others of different
ages and genders, and the rich social experiences intrinsic to an extensive
social network. These social deprivations often result in deficiencies in social,
sexual, and maternal skills.16

Cognition

Elephants have the largest brain size among terrestrial mammals, and living
in extensive social networks has likely promoted their cognitive complex-
ity.17 Elephants excel at long-term, extensive spatial-temporal (e.g., trave-
ling great distances to find food and water) and social memory, largely as
a result of their unusually large social systems. Advanced mental capacity is
indicated by elephants’ exceptional cognitive abilities, from behavioral inno-
vation in the manufacture, modification, and use of tools to the display of
behaviors that potentially could be related to theory of mind (the capacity to
understand what others see, feel, and know).18 Anecdotal evidence for the-
ory of mind is compelling, as exemplified by an elephant Chandrasekhan,
who refused to lower a pillar of wood into a hole containing a sleeping dog,
instead waiting until the dog had left.19
Elephants are notable among nonhuman animals for their reactions,
such as targeted assistance, to disabled and injured conspecifics. Hart et al.
describe a severely injured matriarch who benefited from the assistance of
an unrelated and relatively unfamiliar elephant who helped lift her to her

16Lee and Moss, “Welfare and Well-Being,” 32.

17R. W. Byrne and L. A. Bates, “Elephant Cognition in Primate Perspective,” Comparative Cognition
and Behavior Reviews 4 (2009): 66; Hart et al., “Large Brains,” 91.
18Poole and Moss, “Elephant Sociality,” 88–89.

19Ibid., 89.
186     C. Doyle

feet and tried to get her to walk.20 Such actions suggest an empathetic per-
spective and the capacity for cognitive empathy, which de Waal describes
as “empathy combined with contextual appraisal and an understanding of
what caused the object’s emotional state.”21 This is extremely rare among
nonhuman animals, known only in great apes, bottlenose dolphins, and
elephants.22 Elephants are popularly known for mourning the loss of their
dead and for the ritualistic handling of the bones of dead elephants, show-
ing intense concentration while examining these bones, sometimes for long
periods. Researchers who placed similar-sized bones of other species found
that elephants showed less interest in them than in those of dead elephants,
suggesting that elephants may understand and respond empathetically to the
death of a conspecific.23
Another indicator of exceptional intelligence is mirror self-recognition
(MSR), which is thought to correlate with higher forms of empathy and
altruistic behavior and which is considered a measure of self-awareness. For
determination of MSR, a test subject is marked with an odorless mark that
can be seen in a mirror. If the subject touches the mark, the test is passed.
In research at the Bronx Zoo in New York, Asian elephant Happy was the
first of her kind to pass the test for MSR. This ability was long thought
limited to humans and apes but is now further recognized in dolphins and
elephants.24

Learning to Be an Elephant

Long-lived elephants, like humans, have lengthy periods of infancy and of

physical and social development. In essence, each individual must learn to be
an elephant. It is within the context of family that developing calves acquire
survival skills and a broad range of behaviors. Mothers convey knowledge
to their daughters about identifying friends and enemies, finding water dur-
ing periods of drought, and locating particular food items.25 Juvenile females

20Hart et al., “Large Brains,” 91.

21F. B. M. de Waal, “Putting the Altruism Back into Altruism: The Evolution of Empathy,” Annual
Review of Psychology 59 (2008): 283.
22J. Plotnik et al., “Self-Recognition in the Asian Elephant and Future Directions for Cognitive

Research with Elephants in Zoological Settings,” Zoo Biology 28 (2009): 3.

23Bates et al., “Elephant Cognition,” R545.

24Plotnik et al., “Self-Recognition,” 7.

25Poole and Granli, “Mind and Movement,” 11.

 12  Elephants in Captivity     187

engage in allomothering, in which they care for calves, gaining the experi-
ence they will need for successfully rearing their own calves.26 When a young
female in a natural habitat is ready to give birth, her mother and experienced
females assist, helping the newborn to stand and providing immediate pro-
tection and socialization.27 Lee and Moss suggest that without the experi-
ence of allomothering, first-time mothers would be “disastrously unprepared,
as seen in zoo elephants.”28 Appropriate mating behaviors also are acquired
in the social context.29
Poole and Granli state, “Social learning and behavioral innovation are
essential elements of individual development and the very fabric of elephant
society, tradition and culture.”30 In captivity, elephants are not subject to the
level of challenges and natural pressures that result in innovation and learn-
ing. For most adult elephants in Western zoos and circuses, the transmission
of essential social information from one generation to the next was severed
when they were abducted from their families as calves. When free-living
elephant cultures are disrupted, dysfunctional behaviors result, including
hyper-aggression and aberrant behavior.31 Captive elephant mothers who
lack the knowledge and support necessary to give birth to, care for, and suc-
cessfully raise their calves have attacked and killed their infants, an aberra-
tion unknown in free-living elephants.32 Western society condemns these
disruptions, yet taking elephants from their natural habitats and confining
them for display and entertainment has similar effects.

Captivity

In captivity, all aspects of an elephant’s life are constrained and controlled—

and markedly so in zoos and circuses. Feeding times are set by staff, foods
lack the variety and kinds found in nature, there is no choice of mates and

26P. C. Lee and C. J. Moss, “Calf Development and Maternal Rearing Strategies,” in The Amboseli

Elephants: A Long-Term Perspective on a Long-Lived Mammal, ed. C. J. Moss, H. Croze, and P. C. Lee
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 235–36.
27Poole and Granli, “Mind and Movement,”11.

28Lee and Moss, “Calf Development,” 236.

29Poole and Granli, “Mind and Movement,” 11.

30Ibid.

31R. Slotow, D. Balfour, and O. Howison, “Killing of Black and White Rhinoceroses by African

Elephants in Hluhluwe-Umfolozi Park, South Africa,” Pachyderm 31 (2001): 14–20.

32R. Clubb and G. Mason, A Review of the Welfare of Zoo Elephants in Europe (Horsham, UK: RSPCA,

2002), 169–72.
188     C. Doyle

companions, and offspring and bonded elephants are often separated in the
interests of the captive facilities and not elephants’ social needs.33 In the
confinement environment, physical and social choices are exceedingly lim-
ited (if allowed at all), and almost everything becomes a predictable routine.
Though basic needs are addressed to varying degrees, confinement condi-
tions do not require or allow for the degree of intellect, agency, and coop-
eration that would be necessary for survival in a complex spatial-temporal
environment.
What does this mean for the elephants themselves? Savage-Rumbaugh
addresses that question when writing about the welfare of apes in captive
environments, in terms easily applicable to elephants. She states,

No captive environment requires cooperation or group coordination, so cap-

tive apes have no need to construct and maintain a cultural stance toward
mutual group action across significant spans of time. Their captive envi-
ronment negates the possibilities of travel, kinship structure, roles within
the group, group-based mental worlds, and constructs of cultural realities.
However, as human beings, we know that it is precisely these types of mental
processes that provide meaning for our human minds.34

What gives meaning to elephants’ lives, like those of apes and humans,
are the essential interactions, choices, and self-determining activities that
free-living elephants engage in every day: long-distance movement, food
selection, and social interactions with family, associates, and strangers. Life
for captive elephants is not distinguished by the very wide expression of
cognitive, social, and cultural capabilities that free-living elephants exercise.
Rather, it is defined by the limitations of captive environments that deter-
mine social group size, activities, health, and behavior.
For more than four thousand years, elephants have been captured,
trained, and exploited for use as beasts of burden, machines of war, and
objects of display in religious settings and for display in zoos and cir-
cuses.35 Zoos and circuses routinely refer to elephants as domesticated, but
this is untrue. Elephants have not been domesticated through generations

33Lee and Moss, “Welfare and Well-Being,” 31.

34S. Savage-Rumbaugh et al., “Welfare of Apes in Captive Environments: Comments on, and by,
Specific Groups of Apes,” Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science, 10 (2007): 12.
35R. Sukumar, The Story of Asia’s Elephants (Mumbai: Marg Foundation, 2011); Karl Gröning and

Martin Saller, Elephants: A Cultural and Natural History (Cologne: Konemann Verlagsgesellschaft mbH,
1998).
 12  Elephants in Captivity     189

of ­selective breeding for physical and behavioral characteristics that would

make them more suited to captivity.36 They remain undomesticated.

Consequences of Captivity

In modern-day zoos and circuses, elephants endure conditions that are the
polar opposite of the natural physical and social environments to which
they are evolutionarily molded. They are adapted for long-distance living to
meet their environmental, social, and reproductive requirements and thus
are unable to cope, physically or psychologically, with close confinement,
resulting in physical ailments and psychological disorders. Elephant home
ranges can span a minimum of one hundred to two hundred square kilo-
meters, yet elephants are expected to survive in zoo spaces that are at least
ten thousand times smaller than the areas they are shaped by evolution to
inhabit.37 Conservation biologist Keith Lindsay writes, “Elephants may be
highly adaptable, but nothing is that adaptable, to cope with a reduction by
four orders of magnitude in their living space as they are taken from nature
to captivity.”38
The result of the extreme difference between conditions in nature and
captivity is that captive elephants do not thrive, nor are captive enterprises
able to maintain a self-sustaining population of elephants.39 In fact, unless
more elephants are imported from their natural habitats, the US popula-
tion of elephants is predicted to collapse. Pulitzer Prize–winning journal-
ist Michael Berens published a report in the Seattle Times on December 4,
2012, analyzing 390 elephant fatalities at accredited US zoos for the previ-
ous fifty years. Most of the elephants died from injury or disease associated
with captive conditions, from chronic foot disease caused by standing on

36B. Csuti, “Elephants in Captivity,” in Biology, Medicine, and Surgery of Elephants, ed. M. E. Fowler

and S. K. Mikota (Ames, IA: Blackwell, 2006), 15.

37K. Lindsay, “Statement to Los Angeles City Council Regarding Elephants at L.A. Zoo,” Expert

Declarations, Help Billy, December 3, 2008, 3, accessed November 19, 2013, http://helpbilly.org/
get_the_facts.
38Ibid.

39L. Faust, S. D. Thompson, and J. M. Earnhardt, “Is Reversing the Decline of Asian Elephants in

North American Zoos Possible? An Individual-Based Modeling Approach,” Zoo Biology 25 (2006):
201–2; L. Faust, “Technical Report on Demographic Analyses and Modeling of the North American
African Elephant Population: Executive Summary” (unpublished report, Chicago: AZA Population
Management Center, Lincoln Park Zoo, 2005), 1; M. Berens, “Elephants Are Dying Out in America’s
Zoos,” Seattle Times, December 4, 2012, http://seattletimes.com/html/nationworld/2019809167_ele-
phants02m.html.
190     C. Doyle

hard surfaces to musculoskeletal disorders from extreme inactivity in small

enclosures. Of the 321 deaths for which Berens had records, half the ele-
phants were dead by age twenty-three, about a third of their expected life
span of sixty to seventy years. He found that the number of elephant births
failed to offset deaths, which will lead to the demographic extinction of ele-
phants in US zoos within the next fifty years. Research by Clubb et al. sup-
ports Berens’s findings: “Overall, bringing elephants into zoos profoundly
impairs their viability. The effects of early experience, interzoo transfer, and
possibly maternal loss, plus the health and reproductive problems recorded
in zoo elephants suggest stress and/or obesity as likely causes.”40
Anatomic features that make elephants well designed for living in large
spaces—pillar-like legs and muscular foot structures to support elephants’
massive bodies and provide energy-efficient locomotion—are liabilities in
sedentary captive environments.41 Elephants are adapted for near constant
movement. Keeping them in small spaces, without agency, has resulted in
deadly problems, including obesity, birth complications, and foot and joint
diseases. Foot disease is so prevalent in zoos that it is accepted as a chronic
and incurable condition.42
Elephants are subjected to even more extreme living conditions in cir-
cuses. They are chained and transported in train cars and semitrailer trucks
for nearly twelve months each year. They must stand virtually immobilized
in chains for an average of eighteen hours a day and often much longer.43
The very tricks elephants perform are profoundly destructive to their bodies;
strenuous maneuvers such as hind-leg stands are associated with musculo-
skeletal disorders and can cause painful joint disease and perineal hernias.44
Zoos present so-called educational demonstrations with elephants, though
many times the elephants are made to perform circus-like tricks.
Other physical and psychological problems resulting from living in inade-
quate enclosures include hyper-aggression, reproductive disorders, and high
rates of birth complications, stillbirths, and infertility. Stereotypic b­ ehaviors

40R. Clubb et al., “Compromised Survivorship in Zoo Elephants,” Science 12 (2008): 1649.
41Poole and Granli, “Mind and Movement,” 5.
42B. Newman, “Zoo Confinement Gives Elephants Problem Feet,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, November 17,

2006, http://www.post-gazette.com/nation/2006/11/17/Zoo-confinement-gives-elephants-problem-feet/
stories/200611170141.
43Nelson, “Cruelest Show,” 55.

44A. Kuntze, “Work-Related Illness: Hernia Perinealis, Bursitis Praepatellaris and Tyloma Olecrani in

Female Circus Elephants (Elephas maximus ),” Erkrankungen der Zootiere 31 (1989): 185–87.
 12  Elephants in Captivity     191

(e.g., abnormal repetitive swaying, rocking, and head bobbing associated

with impoverished environments and poor welfare) are ubiquitous in ele-
phants in circuses and zoos.45 Infectious diseases represent an increasing
problem in captive elephants. Tuberculosis (often the same strain affecting
humans) is estimated to infect about 12% of Asian and about 2% of African
elephants in the United States.46 The elephant endotheliotropic herpesvirus
(EEHV), frequently fatal to young Asian elephants, has an estimated 85%
mortality rate.47

Management of Elephants

The inhumane training of elephants in all circuses and in some zoos is not
only the greatest focus of animal advocates but also increasingly a concern
of US municipal governments. Trainers rely on negative reinforcement such
as beatings and use bullhooks—steel-tipped rods resembling fireplace pok-
ers with a sharp point and hook at the end—and electric prods to jab and
strike sensitive body parts.48 Fear of pain ensures that elephants consistently
perform routines on demand and remain strictly obedient. In addition to
physical harm, Poole asserts that elephants who are managed this way suffer
psychological harm: an elephant may anticipate the pain of a bullhook blow
not just to herself but also to other elephants.49 Trainers in zoos and cir-
cuses claim that free-living elephant mothers discipline their calves through
rough or painful treatment, but scientific evidence refutes this. An alterna-
tive method of management based on positive reinforcement training and
a protective barrier between elephant and keeper is used in many zoos, but
not in circuses.

45Clubb and Mason, Review of the Welfare of Zoo Elephants, 224–30; G. J. Mason and J. S. Veasey,

“What Do Population-Level Welfare Indices Suggest about the Well-Being of Zoo Elephants?,” Zoo
Biology 29 (2008): 10–11.
46R. Murphree et al., “Elephant-to-Human Transmission of Tuberculosis, 2009,” Emerging Infectious

Diseases 17 (2011): 366, doi:10.3201/eid1703101668.

47A. Zachariah et al., “Fatal Herpes Hemmorhagic Disease in Wild and Orphan Asian Elephants in

Southern India,” Journal of Wildlife Diseases 49 (2013): 381.

48Nelson, “Cruelest Show,” 50.

49J. Poole, “Opinions regarding the Use of Bullhooks on Elephants, Testimony to Massachusetts

Legislators,” January 2007, http://www.elephantvoices.org/multimedia-resources/statements-a-testimonies.

192     C. Doyle

Justifications for Captivity

Jamieson points out that a presumption in favor of liberty with respect to

all nondomesticated animals, whether captive-born or born in their natu-
ral habitats, makes confinement a morally significant consideration for these
animals in zoos and circuses.50 The tension between confining nondomes-
ticated animals and public sentiment against captivity is especially evident
with elephants. Their captivity in zoos and circuses has been the focus of
controversy and protest since the late 1800s51 and, more recently, the subject
of legal action.
Arguments by zoos, and by some circuses, to justify elephants’ captivity
are rooted in classic utilitarianism: they claim that elephants must endure a
“reasonable” degree of diminished individual welfare in exchange for activ-
ities supposedly benefiting the species. These supposed benefits include
conservation, research, and public education.52 This position is ethically
problematic. It is also morally suspect. Zoos have a vested interest in display-
ing elephants, who are an immensely popular, revenue-producing attraction.
They assess not animal needs but available resources, including space, to
determine “reasonable” levels of welfare. Minimal levels of welfare have thus
been encoded in professional zoo standards to ensure that member zoos can
comply with the standards and continue to display elephants. (If accrediting
organizations set higher standards, most zoos would be without elephants.)
The notion of reasonable levels of welfare is framed by the inherent lim-
itations of captive facilities; so too is their interpretation of diminished
welfare. Not only are zoos, and even more so circuses, unable to replicate
elephants’ physical worlds; they also cannot re-create the natural condi-
tions that sustain elephants’ complex psychological, emotional, and cultural
worlds. Instead, they cater only to elephants’ most basic physical needs, pro-
viding nutrition, husbandry, veterinary care, and minimal social opportuni-
ties. Some zoos are working to give elephants more choice and i­ndividual

50D. Jamieson, “Zoos Revisited,” in Ethics on the Ark, ed. B. G. Norton et al. (Washington, DC:
Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995), 55–56.
51D. Beers, For the Prevention of Cruelty: The History and Legacy of Animal Rights Activism in the United

States (Athens: Swallow Press/Ohio University Press, 2006), 79–81.

52M. Hutchins, B. Smith, and M. Keele, “Zoos as Responsible Stewards of Elephants,” in Elephants and

Ethics: Toward a Morality of Coexistence, ed. C. Wemmer and C. A. Christen (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 2008), 285–86; D. Schmitt, “View from the Big Top: Why Elephants Belong in
North American Circuses,” in Elephants and Ethics: Toward a Morality of Coexistence, ed. C. Wemmer
and C. A. Christen (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), 227.
 12  Elephants in Captivity     193

control in their captive environments, and others are establishing larger

social groups for greater enrichment and breeding purposes. But all zoos are
limited by financial and physical restraints that prevent them from achieving
standards that justify keeping elephants in captivity.
Oddly, zoos assume that a species can have welfare and interests but do
not grant this right to individual animals. Despite the many impressive
capabilities elephants possess—self-awareness, empathy, complex intelli-
gence—diminished welfare for individuals and even premature death are
acceptable to zoos for a “greater” cause. At the same time, there is no evi-
dence to show that conservation efforts claimed by zoos and circuses are
effectively aiding free-living elephant populations. Indeed, questions have
been raised about the overall effectiveness of and need for zoo-based con-
servation efforts. Varner and Monroe argue that zoos’ captive breeding pro-
grams are extremely limited, tending to focus on appealing species, even
though ecosystem preservation is essential, and that funds would be bet-
ter spent on preserving habitat.53 In fact, zoos spend hundreds of millions
constructing elephant exhibits and maintaining elephants54—an amount
that could guarantee protection and survival for the entire global elephant
population.

Mixed Messages

Zoos send mixed messages about elephants. They highlight them as indi-
viduals, regularly celebrating elephants’ birthdays with staged events and
encouraging visitors to emotionally engage with them as named individu-
als. Yet those same individuals are “de-personalized” for conservation, in
the form of management and breeding imperatives intended to enhance
the zoo’s captive population or, sometimes, merely for a zoo’s convenience
(e.g., a zoo builds an exhibit for African elephants and disposes of an Asian
elephant). In such instances, zoos (and their consumers) are expected to
detach themselves from the individual for the “greater good” of the species.
Donahue and Trump in The Politics of Zoos state, “In the past, the AZA wor-
ried about member institutions with inadequate animal care standards. In

53G. E. Varner and M. C. Monroe, “Ethical Perspectives on Captive Breeding: Is It for the Birds?,”

Endangered Species UPDATE 8, no. 1 (1990): 27–29.

54In Defense of Animals, “2010–11 Top Ten Worst Zoos for Elephants,” press release, January 18,

2011, accessed November 19, 2013, http://www.helpelephants.com/top_ten_worst_zoos_2010.html.

194     C. Doyle

the elephant case, it sought to prevent individual zoos from caring too much
about individual animals at the expense of the captive population.”55
To justify stripping elephants of their standing as individuals and possibly
causing them harm (e.g., separation of bonded individuals or mothers and
offspring), zoos promote their actions as benefiting the general captive pop-
ulation of elephants and free-living species. Sometimes public concern for
individual animals trumps conservation. In 2011 a public firestorm erupted
in Tucson, Arizona, when the Reid Park Zoo decided to transfer to another
zoo one of two beloved female elephants who had been closely bonded for
more than thirty years. Despite the zoo’s conservation justifications, the
city received more than 16,000 e-mails in opposition to the plan.56 The zoo
chose discretion over conservation, and the elephants remained together.
It is currently popular for zoos to claim that there is no “wild,” or natu-
ral habitat, anymore and that natural habitats are akin to large zoos. Many
zoos state that elephants are safer in zoos than in their home ranges, where
they are subject not only to natural disasters but also to intensive poaching
and human–elephant conflict. At the same time, zoos commend their own
efforts to fund in situ conservation projects and urge their visitors to help
save free-roaming elephants.
These statements about animals’ natural habitats are intended to justify
zoos’ existence and their role as conservationists, but they also may cause
people to believe there is no value in preserving natural ecosystems, even
though this is the most essential and the best aim of conservation. It is dan-
gerous for zoos to claim that captivity is an acceptable alternative to living in
a rich biological environment and a complex social network when the evi-
dence shows that elephants are not thriving in captivity. This position serves
to establish a public view that life in zoos and circuses is preferable to life in
their natural habitats and that attempts to maintain free-living populations
in natural habitats are doomed, when the latter is the only real option for
maintaining the species. The longer elephants are confined and bred in cap-
tivity, the more reduced their competence and adaptability for survival in
their natural habitats.
Circuses also send mixed messages. They display endangered Asian ele-
phants as objects of entertainment, while at the same time claiming that the
act of seeing an elephant in a circus or in media events promoting the circus

55J. Donahue and E. Trump, The Politics of Zoos: Exotic Animals and Their Protectors (DeKalb: Northern

Illinois University Press, 2006), 174.

56Tucson News Now, “Reid Park Zoo Elephants Are Leaving Town Today,” February 29, 2012, http://

www.tucsonnewsnow.com/story/17045569/reid-park-zoo-elephants-are-leaving-town-wednesday.
 12  Elephants in Captivity     195

promotes conservation and “builds awareness of all the other elephants in

the world.”57 In truth, the inappropriate use and portrayal of elephants for
entertainment is more likely to hamper conservation efforts because people
may not perceive them as being in jeopardy.

Captive Breeding and Conservation

Zoo conservation objectives revolve around the establishment of a self-sus-

taining “security population” of captive elephants. This implies that an entire
species can exist outside of its natural range. For elephants, such a goal will
involve not only captive breeding on a scale and with results far exceeding
anything achieved to this date, but also the importation of primarily female
elephants who are reproductively fit from range countries. Adult females in
the present captive population are aging, sending the ex situ population on
its way to extinction.
Capture and importation of elephants from natural habitats for the
purpose of confining them in zoos and circuses creates numerous ethical
dilemmas: separation of calves from families, distress, capture mortalities,
placement of elephants in inadequate captive conditions, and exposure to
disease in captive groups. Other problems include stimulating the illicit cap-
ture of elephants for profit and the further reduction of free-living elephants.
Importing elephants may also harm in situ conservation programs by dis-
tracting attention from the real problems such as human–elephant conflict,
habitat loss, and poaching.58
Zoos and circuses engage in captive breeding programs. But contrary to
the generally accepted measure of ex situ conservation, they do not reintro-
duce adults and/or offspring to range countries, nor do they intend to.59
Instead, zoos use elephants to support only zoo-based conservation efforts:
displaying elephants, using them in public education programs, and using
them for some fundraising for conservation initiatives. Elephants born in
circuses are trained and used for performing.
In truth, the most effective conservation breeding programs aim to
replenish or reestablish species, and they are most effective when coupled

57Schmitt,“View from the Big Top,” 231.

58S.Hedges et al., “Why Inter-Country Loans Will Not Help Sumatra’s Elephants,” Zoo Biology 25
(2006): 242.
59Hutchins et al., “Zoos as Responsible Stewards,” 287.
196     C. Doyle

with recovery objectives for free-ranging populations.60 Without this objec-

tive, zoo breeding programs and their relevance to elephant conservation
are questionable. The distinct possibility also exists that captive breeding
programs may harm ex situ conservation objectives by diverting important
resources from habitat protection.61
Captive breeding programs present ethical problems for individual adults
and their offspring. Studies of elephant social structures demonstrate that
the presence of calves is important to the well-being of female elephants;62
however, breeding elephants in captive environments, no matter how large
the spaces, can quickly become problematic. Should a captive breeding pro-
gram be successful, it will soon have too many adult animals. Space and
financial limitations will result in elephants being separated and transferred
to other facilities in order to accommodate more crowd-drawing calves. An
unwanted consequence of captive breeding is an excess of male elephants,
which puts pressure on captive facilities, most of which are incapable of
confining powerful males. The killing of healthy zoo elephants is ethically
unacceptable.
To maintain genetic diversity, zoos force captive elephants to undergo
procedures that are highly invasive. Females are artificially inseminated,
usually via nonsurgical methods, but resistant females may be inseminated
using a surgical procedure that can result in painful complications.63 Male
elephants may be subjected to forcible semen extraction for artificial insem-
ination of females in other facilities. These procedures physically violate and
objectify elephants, who are given no choice in the matter.
The very act of bringing elephant calves into a captive life raises ethical
questions. Calves are highly desirable to both zoos and circuses because of
the attention and revenues they attract over a long period of time—a calf
can double a zoo’s revenues and donations.64 In circuses, calves are valuable
commodities, trained for many years of performances; females are preferred
since they can produce more performers. When males mature, they become

60N. F. R. Snyder et  al., “Limitations of Captive Breeding in Endangered Species Recovery,”
Conservation Biology 10, no. 2 (1996): 339.
61D. A. Conde et al., “Zoos through the Lens of the IUCN Red List: A Global Metapopulation

Approach to Support Conservation Breeding Programs,” PLoS ONE 8, no. 12 (2013): 1, doi:10.1371/
journal.pone.0080311.
62Poole and Granli, “Mind and Movement,” 15.

63N. Thongtip et al., “Successful Artificial Insemination in the Asian Elephant (Elephas maximus 
)
Using Chilled and Frozen-Thawed Semen,” Reproductive Biology and Endocrinology 7 (2009): 75,
doi:10.1186/1477-7827-7-75.
64Berens, “Elephants Are Dying Out in America’s Zoos.”
 12  Elephants in Captivity     197

too dangerous to use for performances and are warehoused, spending much
of their lives in chains or, on rare occasions, sent to the few zoos that can
safely house and manage them. In zoos and circuses, males typically are sep-
arated from their mothers at a far younger age than would occur in their
natural habitats. Despite their social nature, the majority of males will most
likely live out their lives separated from other males and females, with the
exception of breeding opportunities (if that).
The most challenging ethical question is, what does it mean to an ele-
phant to be captive-born? Like all species, elephants are the product of evo-
lutionary genetics, environment, and experience. How then does captivity
inform or deform an individual’s development as an elephant, and are we, as
humans, able to understand even a small part of what this means? To ignore
these questions is to do no more than maintain genetic warehouses of living
elephants, which is not the same a preserving them, either as healthy indi-
viduals or as a species.

Education

Zoos consider that education, like conservation, is a justification for ele-

phant confinement. AZA past president and CEO Jim Maddy, announcing
$225,000 toward elephant projects, declared that “elephants in AZA-
accredited zoos are wildlife ambassadors who educate the public, create
life-long conservationists, and raise money to support vital International
Elephant Fund conservation projects.”65 (The two million dollars that AZA
zoos donated to this conservation fund over fourteen years seems rather
scant in an era when it is not unusual for a zoo to spend $50 million for a
new elephant exhibit.) His statement conveniently ignores that most people
may simply be entertained by seeing an elephant and that conditions for ele-
phants are so meager in most zoos that seeing them in such conditions gen-
erates negativistic attitudes in many people.66
A study by Falk et al. claimed to show evidence that zoos and aquar-
iums produce long-term positive effects on people’s attitudes toward other

65Association of Zoos and Aquariums, “2012 International Elephant Foundation Grants Backed by

Zoo Donations,” press release, January 9, 2012, http://www.aza.org/PressRoom/detail.aspx?id=23204.

66D. Hancocks, A Different Nature: The Paradoxical World of Zoos and Their Uncertain Future (Berkeley:

University of California Press, 2001), 83, citing research by Stephen R. Kellert and Julie Dunlap,
“Informal Learning at the Zoo: A Study of Attitude and Knowledge Impacts,” A Report to the Zoological
Society of Philadelphia of a Study Funded by the G. R. Dodge Foundation, Philadelphia.
198     C. Doyle

a­ nimals.67 However, Marino et al. analyzed the study’s methodology and

found no evidence to support the claim that zoos promote positive attitude
change, increased knowledge and understanding, or interest in conservation
in their visitors.68 Other studies have found that the general visitor does not
go to a zoo to be educated.69
The claimed educational functions of zoos are not as simple as they
appear. Children and adults see elephants in an artificial environment pre-
sented to them as a naturalistic habitat, even though it bears no semblance
to the dynamic ecosystems that are described on exhibit signage. Forest-
dwelling Asian elephants and savanna-living African elephants inhabit strik-
ingly similar enclosures, with the exception of a few architectural elements
or signage meant to evoke Thailand or Africa. People are claimed to con-
nect with nature by viewing elephants in these contrived “habitats” that lack
any biological diversity. Seeing elephants in zoos and circuses reinforces the
notion that our society approves of their captivity, supporting a domination
mentality that elephants exist for our pleasure, entertainment, and educa-
tion—regardless of the physical or psychological harms. Keeping elephants
in obviously artificial and small spaces broadcasts the message that we are
more powerful than they are, that elephants have no existence independent
of humans, and that humans can and must manage and control their lives.70

Research

Zoos and circuses cite research as another activity that supports conserva-
tion, focusing on reproductive biology, artificial insemination, disease, and
to a lesser extent communication.71 Some zoo research may contribute to
a better understanding of both captive and free-ranging elephants—one
example is Happy at the Bronx Zoo, who passed the mirror self-recognition
test—but the great majority is mostly self-serving and specific to captive
situations. This includes research on enhancing elephant reproduction and

67J. H. Falk et al., Why Zoos and Aquariums Matter: Assessing the Impact of a Visit to a Zoo or Aquarium

(Silver Spring, MD: Association of Zoos and Aquariums, 2007).

68L. Marino et al., “Do Zoos and Aquariums Promote Attitude Change in Visitors? A Critical

Evaluation of the American Zoo and Aquarium Study,” Society and Animals 18 (2010): 126–38.
69J. D. Altman, “Animal Activity and Visitor Learning at the Zoo,” Anthrozoos 11, no. 1 (1998): 12.

70D. Jensen and K. Tweedy-Holmes, Thought to Exist in the Wild: Awakening from the Nightmare of Zoos

(Santa Cruz, CA: No Voice Unheard, 2007), 86.

71Hutchins et al., “Zoos as Responsible Stewards,” 88–89; Schmitt, “View from the Big Top,” 231–33.
 12  Elephants in Captivity     199

artificial insemination techniques, needed for captive elephants who do not

reproduce well in confinement. Free-living elephants, on the other hand,
have no problems reproducing. Zoo research on disease focuses on ailments
that are more problematic for elephants in captivity than in their natural
state such as EEHV. Captive environments may provide opportunities for
research into facets of elephant biology that are difficult to study in natural
habitats. But there is ethical tension between the benefits obtained through
this research and the practice of keeping elephants in inadequate captive
conditions, as well as a practical dilemma of the value in applying findings
to free-living elephants from research on elephants held in inadequate spaces
and under rigidly controlled management.

Current State of Elephants

Worldwide, there are approximately 1200 elephants in zoos and 560 in

circuses.72 The vast majority of them were taken from their natural habi-
tats and the capture of elephants for display continues, even though these
free-living populations are highly unstable. The Asian elephant population
is about 50,000, and the species is listed as endangered.73 African elephants,
with a population of about 500,000, are listed as vulnerable.74 African ele-
phants are currently at immense risk because of illegal ivory poaching.
Nearly one hundred African elephants a day are being killed for their tusks,
and if nothing is done, the population could disappear in little more than
twelve years.75 This, however, is not an argument for captivity. It is an argu-
ment for greater protections for free-ranging elephants and their habitats
and for innovative solutions to stifle the demand for ivory and the illegal
animal trade.

72Clubb and Mason, A Review of the Welfare of Zoo Elephants, 26.

73A. Choudhury et al. (IUCN SSC Asian Elephant Specialist Group), “Elephas maximus,” 2008, The
IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, version 2014.1, http://www.iucnredlist.org/details/7140/0.
74J. J. Blanc, “Loxodonta africana,” 2008, The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, Version 2014.1,

http://www.iucnredlist.org/details/12392/0.
75J. Ingham, “Elephants ‘Extinct within 12 Years,’” Express, August 12, 2013, http://www.express.co.uk/

news/world/421411/Elephants-extinct-within-12-years.
200     C. Doyle

Conclusion

A philanthropist funding a proposed “elephant management preserve” that

was intended to conserve the African elephant species recently stated, “We
don’t have enough money to save the world, but we might have enough to
help elephants have a new evolutionary path.”76 Ignoring the fact that we
do have enough money to save most if not all of the world’s free-living ele-
phants in their natural habitats, what could this new evolutionary path look
like, and how would a managed, dependent, and unnatural existence shape
elephants’ cognitive and cultural worlds?
Mason and Veasey maintain that good welfare can be obtained with-
out imitating all aspects of natural life. Although certain natural activities
may be important, they say, others can be relinquished harmlessly, as they
become obsolete in a captive environment where animals are well pro-
visioned and protected.77 This raises the question of what the unintended
consequences would be if these behaviors became obsolete and what mean-
ing that would have for elephants and for who they are. For example, what
would it mean for elephants to have no need to recall the smells and sounds
of a large number of other elephants, or to no longer face the environmen-
tal and social challenges that lead to behavioral innovation? What happens
when group coordination and cooperation are no longer necessary for sur-
vival? These sensory and cultural losses may not harm welfare, but they have
critical significance for free-living elephant identity and for the mental pro-
cesses that provide meaning for their keen minds.
Philosophers have debated the moral dilemmas of keeping sentient non-
human animals in captivity using various approaches. Singer maintains
that zoos confine animals for the public’s amusement in ways that are con-
trary to the interests of the animals, yet if zoos “really put the interests of
the animals first, and only then find ways for us to observe them, they are
not immoral.”78 Jamieson argues that when the role of education, captive
breeding, and reintroduction programs is at best marginal, the “benefit of
preservation is not significant enough to overcome the presumption against

76R. Greene, “Mammoth Proposal: An Elephant Reserve in Tehama County,” Red Bluff Daily News,

December 6, 2013, http://www.redbluffdailynews.com/business/ci_24669207/mammoth-proposal-

an-elephant-reserve-tehama-county.
77G. J. Mason and J. S. Veasey, “How Should the Psychological Well-Being of Zoo Elephants Be

Objectively Investigated?,” Zoo Biology 29 (2010): 238.

78Independent (London), “Peter Singer: You Ask the Questions,” Independent, September 11, 2006,

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/peter-singer-you-ask-the-questions-415524.html.
 12  Elephants in Captivity     201

depriving an animal of its liberty.”79 Regan rejects the utilitarian construct

as fatally flawed because behaviors that would be condemned as reprehensi-
ble by human society could be construed as ethical under this approach. He
advocates the animal rights view in which nonhuman animals have inherent
value apart from their utility to humans. What happens to them matters to
them, and “like us,” Regan states, “they are somebodies, not somethings.”80
Alward finds the capabilities theory, as articulated by philosopher Martha
Nussbaum, to be the most effective approach in grounding our moral obli-
gation to elephants because it does not depend on whether elephants have
rights or on weighing the harms of elephant captivity against perceived ben-
efits. Essential to the capabilities approach is the idea of what it means for an
individual to live a life fully. As applied to elephants, this approach does not
rely on how satisfied elephants are or what resources are available to them
but examines “what individual elephants in a given situation are able to do
and be, whether they are able to live fully elephantine lives.”81 Neither zoos
nor circuses allow elephants to exercise their capabilities fully according to
Alward’s ten central elephant functional capabilities. For example, captive
elephants do not live in conditions conducive to their physical and mental
health; they are unable to live in environments to which elephants have nat-
urally adapted; and they die prematurely as a result of their confinement. (It
should be noted that Nussbaum believes nonhuman animals can be morally
confined in zoos in some cases, though many of her arguments do not apply
to elephants.)
Evidence shows that zoos and circuses are unable to provide the condi-
tions required to maintain a self-sustaining elephant population, much less
allow for the fullest exercise of elephants’ capabilities, despite the provision
of nutritional food, daily care, and veterinary treatment. In 2002 the United
Kingdom’s Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals recom-
mended that zoos phase out the display of elephants by ceasing breeding
programs and importation while improving the welfare of existing elephants
and recommended that the use of elephants in circuses cease.82 Dozens of

79Jamieson, “Zoos Revisited,” 60.

80T. Regan, “Are Zoos Morally Defensible?,” in Ethics on the Ark, ed. B. G. Norton et al. (Washington,
DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995), 44.
81L. Alward, “Why Circuses Are Unsuited to Elephants,” in Elephants and Ethics: Toward a Morality of

Coexistence, ed. C. Wemmer and C. A. Christen (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008),
216.
82Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, Live Hard, Die Young: How Elephant Suffer

in Zoos (Southwater, UK: RSPCA, 2002), 10, http://www.idausa.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/

Satellite-1.pdf.
202     C. Doyle

zoos in the United States and United Kingdom have already closed their ele-
phant exhibits, some for ethical reasons.
Elephants deserve special moral consideration because of their distinctive
combination of physical, social, and cognitive attributes, as well as their eco-
logical importance and cultural value to humans.83 Yet those in captivity are
denied the environmental and social conditions that give rise to and support
their celebrated attributes. Issues of autonomy, cognitive and social com-
plexity, and culture fall far outside the framework of what captive agencies
can provide for elephants. Thus, illuminated professionals should admit that
captivity is, for ethical reasons, wrong for elephants. Until that time, cap-
tive elephants will continue to exist in conditions that prohibit them from
wholly realizing their physical, social, and cultural worlds and from fully
becoming elephants.
Acknowledgements   My sincere thanks to David Hancocks for lending his keen
insights, fine editing skills, and knowledge of elephants in captivity. I also thank
Jackie Gai, DVM, for her assistance and encouragement in divining the truth and
Marshall Carter-Tripp for her helpful comments on this manuscript.

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