How Safari Park prepared elephants for visitors
Add Axios as your preferred source to
see more of our stories on Google.
Elephants' cribs. Photo: Kate Murphy/Axios
Bringing guests up close to elephants requires careful planning and making sure the animals are comfortable, Safari Park officials told Axios.
Why it matters: The Elephant Valley exhibit is meant to allow guests to better see and experience elephants, but some activists say the priority should be the elephants' quality of life.
How it works: The eight elephants in Elephant Valley needed time to acclimate to their new surroundings and the windows that allow visitors to see them up close, wildlife ambassador Marco Wendt told Axios.
- That meant spending a lot of time in the exhibit before it opened to the public.
- "Like if I bought a new house and was trying to get used to the layout," Wendt said. "It'll take a little bit for the elephants to learn the nuances of it, how to approach it."
Case in point: The San Diego Zoo waited until the new pandas told staff "they were ready to open their doors" to guests, he said.
Zoom in: Elephants can say they're ready in their own way, Wendt said.
- Elephants communicate by flaring out or waving their ears, flapping their trunks or sticking their trunks straight out, rumbling, or trumpeting, he said.
- "Guests are going to be so close, they will be able to hear the rumble; it's almost akin to a domestic cat purr," he said. "It shows, 'I'm feeling cozy, I'm feeling good, life is great.'"
Friction point: Some animal conservation groups like the Nonhuman Rights Project say elephants should not be this close to people.
- "It seems like the expansion and the renovations are all tailored to human visitors, not to enhancing the lives of the elephants who are held captive there," the group's director of campaigns, Courtney Fern, told Axios.
- "There's no zoo in the U.S. that is acceptable for an elephant," she said.
State of play: Instead, Fern said, zoos should transition their elephant exhibits to using IMAX movies, interactive exhibits and animatronic elephants, a sort of pachyderm Jurassic Park.
The other side: Wendt said Elephant Valley is designed to mimic elephants' experiences in the wild, where they travel miles in search of food and water.
- That involves changing up where they eat and get water, so the 13-acre exhibit isn't stagnant.
- "Our elephant crew works extremely hard every single day to offer different experiences for our elephants," Wendt said. "So when you go to Elephant Valley, keep a sharp eye and try to see where the elephants are going and how they're foraging."