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can be found in various captive facilities such as a zoo, Animal sanctuary, circus, or camp, usually under veterinary supervision. They can be used for educational, entertainment, or work purposes.
The earliest evidence of captive elephants dates to the Indus Valley Civilization about 4,500 years ago. Since then, captive elephants have been used around the world in war, ceremony, and for Working animal and entertainment. (2025). 9780470344484, Blackwell Pub. ISBN 9780470344484 Captive elephants have been kept in animal collections for at least 3,500 years. The first elephant arrived in North America in 1796. London Zoo, the first scientific zoo, housed elephants beginning in 1831.
Before the 1980s, zoos obtained their elephants by capturing them from the wild. Increased restrictions on the capture of wild elephants and dwindling wild populations caused zoos to turn to captive breeding. The first successful captive birth in North America of an Asian elephant occurred at Oregon Zoo in 1962, while the first African elephant captive birth occurred at Zoo Knoxville in 1978. Today, most zoos obtain their elephants primarily through Captive breeding, though occasionally zoos will obtain elephants from semi-captive work camps in Asia or rescue elephants that would otherwise be culled in Africa. Without an increase in or an influx of wild elephants, practitioners fear that captive elephant populations could become non-viable within 50 years.
In 2006, 286 elephants were kept in American zoos (147 African elephants and 139 Asian elephants). Nearly one in three Asian elephants lives in captivity—about 15,000 in total—mostly in work camps, temples, and ecotourism sites in the countries in which they naturally occur. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) estimates the total population of Asian elephants in the wild is 40,000 to 50,000, and that of African elephants in the wild is 400,000 to 600,000.
The expression white elephant derives from a white elephant being considered sacred and therefore disqualified from useful work, yet posing a large ownership cost. The origin of the expression is from the story that the kings of Siam gave white elephants as a gift to courtiers they disliked, in order to ruin the recipient by the great expense incurred in maintaining the animal.
In the wild, elephant herds usually consist of a matriarch who leads a stable group of related adult females and their young offspring. When male elephants reach maturity (usually by the age of 12) they disperse from the herds and live on their own or join groups called , where they associate with other males during the times of the year that they are not sexually active. When males are sexually active, they enter a state called musth, during which time they roam widely, searching for available females. During this time, they are extremely aggressive toward other males they encounter.
In captivity, providing elephants with a social structure that resembles their own natural lifestyle is difficult in part given that moving elephants between different facilities to mimic male dispersal or facilitate breeding is a logistically challenging task, but also because extreme aggression of adult male elephants while in musth poses a health and safety threat to keepers and other animal species, and, to a lesser degree, to other elephants.
In Nepal, elephants are ridden by Park ranger to patrol national forests and for entertainment by Tourism.Varma, S., and Ganguly, S. (2011). Captive Elephants in Bardia National Park, Nepal, Investigationsinto Population, Management, Welfare and a Review of Elephant Training by Working Elephant Programme of Asia (WEPA), and WWF Finland at Bardia Hattisar, Elephants in Captivity: CUPA/ANCF–Occasional Report. No. 18. Compassion Unlimited Plus Action (CUPA) and Asian Nature Conservation Foundation (ANCF), Bangalore, India http://asiannature.org/sites/default/files/OR%2018%20Captive%20elephants%20in%20Bardia%20National%20Park%20-Nepal.pdf In Myanmar, elephants assist in logging operations. In North America, Australasia, and Europe, elephants are primarily trained for , where they may be trained to perform tricks for the entertainment of crowds, and in , where they may be trained to participate in their own Animal husbandry by, for example, presenting their feet for nail trims or opening their mouth for dental exams. The use of elephants in circuses is controversial; public outcry caused Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circuses in the United States to commit to retiring their elephants to a Animal sanctuary in 2015.
There are three primary training styles that can be used either separately or together in elephant facilities, each with its own pros and cons for elephant welfare and human safety:
. Chemical sedation of an elephant is risky and can cause harm to the animal or to the people immobilizing the animal. As such, minimizing the need for anesthesia as much as possible is desirable in most situations. The lack of training in no contact systems also means that elephants do not receive the enrichment benefits that come with regular voluntary training with positive reinforcement. Despite these concerns, some facilities use no contact systems for particularly aggressive or dangerous elephants, particularly males during musth.
Some facilities will use a combination of these handling methods, and will for example use free contact with their female elephants and protected contact with their more dangerous males.
As such, substantial effort has gone into increasing the birth rate in captive elephant populations. Due to the size, intelligence, and strong social bonds of elephants, moving elephants from facility to facility for the purpose of breeding can engender severe logistic hurdles and cause stress to the elephants moved, as well as the elephants present in the new facility. It may be preferable to relocate young males, who would naturally disperse away from their herds of birth in the wild, as opposed to females, who would normally stay with their herd of birth for life in the wild.
Because of the stress and logistics involved in moving elephants from one facility to another, some managers are turning to artificial insemination to produce offspring. Semen may be collected from males in other collections or from wild males to further increase the genetic diversity of the captive population.
Animal welfare concerns about elephants in captivity stem from the uniqueness of elephants' social structure, biology, size, and spatial requirements. In the wild, elephants sometimes walk 50 miles a day, while the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) in the United States recommends a minimum of 5400 ft2 (500 m2) of space per elephant in outdoor habitats for their member . Proponents of elephants in zoos argue that wild elephants walk long distances because of the necessity of finding water, food, or mates, but that captive elephants do not require the same amount of walking if resources are more readily available.
In the wild, elephant herds (particularly those of ) can be quite large. The AZA requires their member facilities to house at least three females, two males, or three mixed-sex individuals in order to mimic wild herd structure, though this is much smaller than many wild herds. In 2008, a study of mainly European and North American zoos found that one-fifth of elephants in these zoos lived alone or with only one other elephant and that the mean number of elephants held in these zoos was 4.28. In recent years, there has been some progress in integrating smaller elephant herds across different zoos into larger groups, though advancement in this area is ongoing.
There has been some effort to understand which behaviors in captive elephants indicate good welfare and which indicate welfare concerns. In 2015, the Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) in the United Kingdom developed a set of indicators that practitioners and oversight bodies can use to determine the state of an individual elephant's welfare in captivity. This report was compiled in response to an earlier government report that indicated that many elephants in UK zoos experienced issues with foot health, obesity, and Stereotypy. Important indicators of welfare included:Asher, Lucy, Ellen Williams, and Lisa Yon. 2015. “Developing Behavioural Indicators, as Part of a Wider Set of Indicators, to Assess the Welfare of Elephants in UK Zoos.” Defra. http://sciencesearch.defra.gov.uk/Default.aspx?Menu=Menu&Module=More&Location=None&Completed=0&ProjectID=18866 .
In 2012, two elephants in Tete d’Or Zoo, Lyon (France), were diagnosed with tuberculosis. Due to the threat of transmitting tuberculosis to other animals or visitors to the zoo, their euthanasia was initially ordered by city authorities but a court later overturned this decision.
At an elephant sanctuary in Tennessee, a quarantined 54-year-old African elephant being treated for tuberculosis was considered to be the source of latent (inactive) tuberculosis infections in eight workers.
In 2018, a bronchoalveolar lavage technique was proposed for tuberculosis diagnosis in elephants. This technique is safer to the operator, has a higher sensitivity, and is less prone to contamination than the traditional trunk wash approach.
The first recognized fatal case of EEHV in an Asian elephant was identified at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., in 1995, but subsequent investigation of stored tissue samples found evidence of fatal cases of EEHV in captivity dating back to at least 1988. Testing has shown that these viruses appears to be carried in latency (without symptoms) in most Asian and African elephant adults, and that these adults tend to become infectious when they experience stress or excitement, including after the birth of a calf. Asian elephant calves are extremely susceptible to the virus during the period after they have been weaned from their Lactation, when they are no longer protected by Passive immunity. Active EEHV infection causes small nodules on the head and trunk, and inside the lungs of individuals with mild cases.
In fatal attacks (usually caused by the EEHV 1A strain), the virus acts quickly, usually causing death within one hour to seven days within the onset of when untreated. Symptoms include lethargy, unwillingness to eat, Limp, colic, and diarrhea. The virus causes widespread Bleeding of Endothelium.
There is no cure for EEHV, but zoos have developed some treatments that have shown some effectiveness in suppressing the virus and preventing fatality. The European Association of Zoos and Aquaria's (EAZA) treatment guidelines recommend administering fluid therapy, fresh Blood plasma from adult elephants that have antibodies against the virus, and including famciclovir, ganciclovir, or Aciclovir.EAZA, Elephant Taxon Advisory Group. 2015. “Emergency Care for Elephants Clinically Ill from Elephant Endotheliotropic Herpes Virus-Hemorrhagic Disease (EEHV-HD).” Of elephants that have been treated for severe EEHV, there is an approximate 40% survival rate.
Common foot problems among captive elephants include overgrown nails, soles, and , necrotic pododermatitis, the formation of , and split nails and soles. Though these conditions do not usually cause mortality on their own, they are often the reason that captive facilities choose to Euthanasia their elephants due to quality of life concerns. As such, many elephant facilities perform regular foot care in hopes of preventing serious, chronic foot problems. In the wild, elephants' feet are worn down as elephants walk, and the goal of captive foot care is to simulate this wearing-down effect. Elephants in free contact or protected contact facilities can be trained to accept and assist with routine foot care, including nail filing and trimming of the foot pad. Elephants that are not trained must be Anesthesia to accept foot care, which brings an element of risk for elephant and handler alike.
Common musculoskeletal problems include degenerative joint disease, osteoarthritis, Injury, and soft tissue strains. Due to their large body mass and long life, elephants are thought to be especially prone to these problems as they age. The relatively sedentary lifestyle of a captive elephant in comparison to its wild counterparts likely contributes to these issues.
A 2016 study of North American zoos found that predictors of poor foot health included older age, more time spent on hard floors, less space in nighttime enclosures, and a high percentage of time spent in exhibits that allowed choice between being indoors or outdoors. The same study found correlations between poor musculoskeletal health and more time spent on hard floors and lack of space in daytime exhibits. It is thought that using soft sand on floors and providing access to grass, dirt, or sand outside, giving elephants increased space in their day and night enclosures, and avoiding large changes in temperature and humidity between indoor and outdoor spaces may improve foot and musculoskeletal health.
Higher incidence of obesity in zoo elephants appears to be correlated with high diversity of food offered, less exercise, and a regular feeding schedule, suggesting that facilities that wish to lessen obesity in their elephant collection should walk their elephants frequently and feed them a few food types at unpredictable times of day.
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