Question: do you ever worrie about the elephants health

Ellen Williams answered on 6 Mar 2017:

Really great question and extremely important! Actually no I don’t, not because I don’t care but because I don’t need to worry about their health. All of my elephants are housed in UK and Irish zoos, where they are cared for by fantastic teams of keepers. There is also lots of legislation protecting all of our zoo animals, elephants have very specific needs and all of my zoos (as with all UK and Irish zoos) are always striving to ensure their needs are met, by doing research and just by knowing their animals. My project fits in really nicely with that as I am trying to work out how elephants choose their friends – if we can work out how and why they choose their friends then we can try to make sure we are allowing them the right opportunities in terms of their social needs. As you know living with someone usually has good points and bad points so making sure elephants are happy is just as important as giving them food and water 🙂