• Question: Do elephants in a zoo act differently to elephants in the wild?

    Asked by Katch to Carrie on 16 Mar 2017.
    • Photo: Carrie Ijichi

      Carrie Ijichi answered on 16 Mar 2017:


      captive elephants have the same behavioural needs as wild elephants – that doesn’t change when we put them in zoos. The problem is that the zoo environment prevents them from expressing some of these and that’s why they behave differently. So, they can’t walk vast distances like they do in the wild but they would if they had the opportunity. Then the elephants can start to behave abnormally because of this and do things wild elephants don’t do

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