Elephants challenges and rewards designing a living space for the grey giants

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1 Zoo Design Conference Wroclaw 2017 Elephants challenges and rewards designing a living space for the grey giants Klaus Wünnemann, Stefan Geretschläger

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3 All elephants benefit of soft surfaces Soft surfaces can be structured by the elephants elephants build beds! Old elephants even need slopes of soft surface to lay down and come up again. Soft surfaces will favor joints one of the most vulnerable parts in elephant anatomy.

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6 All elephants will benefit from enrichment Some principles: Different levels of challenge regarding age - You can t challenge young bulls too much, but you may experience that older elephants need easier exercises. Different levels of challenge regarding time start with easier exercises.

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9 All elephants will benefit from enrichment Enrichment should be available for all member of the group small and large ones as well. Enrichment should challenge all skills and can be used as a rehab training. Use all levels inclusive underneath the surface. Use enrichment in different places, also in the water!

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13 All elephants benefit from intense structuring the exhibit Slopes to vary the degree of pressure on different legs. Different surfaces for zone therapy. Water to swim, lay down. Shade.

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16 Common misunderstandings: Elephants are tropical animals and need warm temperatures. Quite some elephants (African as Asian) in the wild experience temperatures around ore below zero degree Celsius, water freezing temperature. As long as they can warm up again there is no need to pamper them. Our elephants get access to the outdoor enclosures as long they want, day and night as there is no risk of slipping on frozen ice. Different temperature levels in the enclosure can help reduce the extreme costs of keeping elephants.

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18 Common misunderstandings: Elephants can t climb. They can and enjoy it (depending on age and health status).

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22 Mixed species exhibits Elephants are highly individualistic animals. What works with one elephant can lead to a fatal injury with others or with the same individual in a different situation or age. In mixed species exhibits elephants are always the species with the potential to (fatally) injure the other species. Great effort has to be made, that the other animals can avoid the elephants and have good living condition also if they can t enter the elephant enclosure. Keeping this in mind mixed species enclosures can benefit both species. Mixed exhibits with Galliformes, Bovidae, Cervidae and Cercopithecidae have been successful over long time. A lot of other combination have been tried and might be possible.

23 Mixed species exhibits While it is quite obvious that smaller species get a lot of enrichment from the activities of the elephants what are the benefits for the grey giants? Higher alertness especially when coinhabitants share the same food. Especially older elephants have shown more alertness if there is a food competition with some herbivores in the exhibit. Play there have been a lot of observations of elephants playchasing other animals. As long as the weaker partner can choose beginning and end of this play there is no objection regarding animal welfare.

24 Elephant houses are build for eternity or near to it, as they tend to exist for more than 50 years! In zoos this is close to eternity. Look back 50 Years in Zoo History: Breeding gorillas was a rare event, all elephants were kept hands on, there were no jelly fish exhibits and educational departments were in existence only in the most forward thinking zoos. Our only chance that our enclosures for elephants will meet the needs over most of their lifespan is: Build them as flexible as possible!

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28 Flexibility is not trying to find the one size fits all solution Flexibility is to create a structure which can be adjusted to future needs as easily as possible.

29 Flexibility Doors doors for elephants are expensive but offer solutions for the social development which will come. Additional space - Your group might grow, Exhibits might grow, so it s clever to build in a way that allow development.

30 Flexibility Access to all parts of the enclosure with wheel loader or other machinery Additonal costs don t think your elephant exhibit is ready at the day you open it. Put at least 5% of the building costs aside to fix the bugs you and your elephants will detect.

31 Flexibility Staff Elephant keeping is not a part of the secret service - keep procedures transparent and documented.

32 Have fun with your elephants!