Consider the Elephant: The Predicament of Captivity

It was the middle of another bustling day around the office, and I had already managed to douse myself in burning coffee. “Great!” I thought to myself, “It is my second week as a correspondent for Time Magazine, and I am already making a fool of myself.” Then, with just my luck, my Senior Editor appeared behind my computer, looked me up and down with an amused expression, and tossed my latest assignment at me. I quickly skimmed over my assignment, hoping to distract myself from the embarrassing situation I had gotten myself into. The assignment was over the moral dilemma surrounding elephants, and I vowed that I would write the best article Time Magazine had ever published to gain back the respect I had managed to lose in the course of the last three hours.

I was wild about animals growing up, and my favorite exhibit at the zoo was, of course, the elephants. They seem so relaxed and friendly, but I always felt empathy toward them and wondered how they felt about captivity. Then in fifth grade, I first heard of poachers and how they make money by killing elephants for their ivory tusks. This idea appalled me, especially because the poachers’ only motive seemed to be money. In this case, captivities protected elephants from people willing to kill these innocent creatures in their natural habitat. The internal conflict of what is best for the elephants laid heavy on my mind for a while, but I suppressed these feelings because I knew there was nothing I could do about the dilemma and that I was too young, so the matter was way over my head anyway. This assignment, however, impelled me to write about the socially critical topic as well as revisit my own moral concerns about how people-- myself included-- think about elephants’ rights and animals’ rights in general.

I needed to get a clear image of what comes to mind when most people think of elephants, so I began my investigation using Google Images. “Surely ivory tusks are not the only images left to memorialize the endangered elephants,” I whispered to nobody in particular. Fortunately, my fears were soothed as half of the images appeared as happy and healthy elephants. One image was of a baby elephant looking ecstatic as it splashed its giant grey feet around in a swirling puddle of murky water, which was absolutely adorable. I automatically developed an endearing passion for this subject as my fond memories of elephants at the zoo came back to mind.

Nearly a fourth of the images depicted vast arrays of tusks stacked in piles on the harsh, cracked ground with no elephants in sight. This cannot be real. Sadly, the images were all real-life instances of the brutality humans inflicted upon elephants for economic profit. I shuddered at the eerie feeling the picture gave off as I stared at the long, white tusks detached from the elephants and organized in the dirt.

The other fourth of the images were those of elephants in captivities such as zoos and circuses. An isolated elephant sat cornered in an enclosure with people’s hands prodding their way through the gate to touch the delicate creature in one image ironically titled “Asian Elephant Settles into Her New Home at the Zoo.” The ignorance of the people in the image baffled me, and I grew worried that some people are unaware of the moral dilemma surrounding the captivity of elephants.

After my unnerving investigation into the perception of elephants, I had to turn off my computer and walk into the break room for a minute, completely forgetting or not caring about the drying coffee stain I was still modeling. After a moment, my excitement about this assignment leaped to life as I realized I had the power to write an article bringing awareness to the responsibility we as a society have for helping elephants. I knew writing about the horrors of poaching elephants would be a dead end because anyone with a moral compass would argue it is wrong, so I decided to focus on the moral predicament of elephants in captivity. First though, I needed to find out what science had to say about elephants to deepen my understanding of the dilemma and clear my head of any biases I had.

When I researched the taxonomy of elephants, I realized most people think of elephants as an herbivore on steroids, but they are so much more complex and intelligent than many of us have learned. Elephants, in the family Elephantidae, are the largest living land animals (Britannica). They belong to the class Mammalia and travel in herds, eating roots, grass, fruit, and bark. The most common elephant is the African savanna elephant, scientifically known as Loxodonta africana. These elephants mostly live in savannas, grasslands, and forests in Africa, but some live in more subtropical areas. Like a 5.5 ton GPS, elephants migrate seasonally--from memory-- to places with available food and water, consuming nearly 300 pounds of food a day (Britannica and National Geographic).

Elephants have three distinctive features: their ears, their trunks, and their tusks. Elephants use their ears to dissipate body heat, like giant fans. African elephants are distinguished from their Asian cousins because their ears are shaped like the continent of Africa, while Asian elephants’ ears are smaller and rounded. Anatomically, the trunk is a combination of the elephants’ upper lip and nose, and it functions as the elephant’s way to breathe, drink, eat, trumpet, and grab objects. One of the biggest assets to an elephant is their tusks, enlarged incisor teeth, which they use for digging and stripping off bark (Britannica and National Geographic). Elephants’ tusks are now also their greatest danger because poachers kill them for their ivory tusks. This is a main reason why elephants have become a vulnerable species in Africa and an endangered species in Asia (National Geographic).

This raises the question that all morally inclined humans should find themselves asking: Is forcing elephants into captivity to keep them away from poachers morally acceptable? Another concern brought up by this question is that the definition of morality may differ between people depending on their viewpoint. The moral dilemma surrounding the captivity of elephants is long-standing and extremely controversial: captivity may benefit the species as a whole, but it seems to foster a poor existence individually.

Proponents of elephants in captivity look at it as a safe haven from external threats such as poachers or trophy hunters; these threats are part of the reason elephants are an endangered species. Advocates also believe that places like zoos are great learning experiences and can foster a stronger connection between people and elephants since people can actually see the animal before them, and therefore, would hold stronger emotions toward the animal’s existence. Those advocating for zoos or reservations for elephants also point out that these captivities have taken a step back from the old way of handling elephants, which was allowing free contact with the animals. Places are now transitioning to protected contact, where keepers never make personal contact with elephants, so they cannot directly influence the elephant’s behaviors through physical manipulation. The ecosystems in which elephants live are easily influenced by them because of how much elephants eat and the destruction they can cause by digging. The old solution for an area where too many elephants altered the ecosystem was culling, or selective killing. The solution for this now would be to place these elephants in captivity, which is surely a better solution than unnecessarily slaughtering them.

As for the opponents of captivity, they strongly urge people to let wild animals be wild. Why do humans need to intervene? These opponents point out that elephants are deprived of three of their basic needs in captivity: extended family, a complex social network, and a wide range of movement. Elephants in the wild live in herds, and baby elephants stay with their mothers until adulthood, where males (bulls) set out to roam alone and females (cows) remain in their herd for their entire life. In captivity, elephants rarely stay with their herd; they are forcibly split apart and cannot replicate that connection with other elephants. There is also debate over the social complexities elephants lean towards. Elephants that eat at the same time, do the same activities, and sleep on similar schedules generally get along better, while others do not --yes, if elephants do not like each other, they will fight, just like people (Safina 25). These creatures are also used to wide-open terrain, and the lack of space in captivities has led to a vast range of diseases including arthritis, infertility, and obesity in elephants. Opponents also point out that free contact still exists in some zoos where bullhooks are used to whip elephants into submission if their behaviors are not desired by their keepers. This brings up moral concerns because now scientists use brain scans on elephants, which prove that elephants have core emotions in deep circuits of their brain, so negative physical contact could lead to anxiety or depression among elephants (Safina 31).

There is no perfect compromise that can consider both positions equally because advocates and opponents argue for opposite solutions, but reservations that allow elephants more freedom but also protection are becoming an accessible option. The morality of forcing elephants into captivity is heavily debated, but so is the question of whether or not humans have a moral obligation to extract elephants from harmful situations in the wild. Considering what we should and shouldn’t do as a society also depends on the individual’s belief in what the elephant is and is not capable of. Speciesists believe only humans can have emotions and interests because we are the superior species, but science has proven elephants have the ability to process emotions similar to the way people can (Safina 31). Animals’ rights warrant our consideration, but it is more of a matter of if these needs ought to hinder our way of living in any way because, of course, it would be much more convenient to ignore the protests of animal activists and continue to treat animals as if they don’t have feelings or interests. As a society, though, we have a moral obligation to understand the dilemma further, and we ought to at least attempt to do what is best for elephants, no matter what moral code we follow.

With a thousand questions in my head and a newfound feeling of responsibility to be the voice for elephants, I sat down at my desk to write precisely what I understood about the moral dilemma surrounding elephants and how society has a moral imperative to spark a change in the field of elephants’ rights and the rights of all animals.