Via the Seattle Times:
Woodland Park Zoo has spent nearly 20 years trying to impregnate Chai through artificial insemination (AI). It’s never resulted in a live birth.
Zoo officials are determined. They say the future of captive elephants is in crisis. But AI continues to be a longshot. Scientific studies, even one cited by the zoo, spell out the myriad challenges of achieving a successful pregnancy through AI.
Activists for years have called on the zoo to stop trying to breed Chai. The most vocal argue the efforts amount to a form of cruelty.
Meanwhile, the Animal Legal Defense Fund confirms that it is appealing a recent King County Superior Court dismissal of a lawsuit against the city of Seattle and Woodland Park Zoo for “illegal zoo practices” concerning the elephants—including the zoo’s insemination practices.
No hearing date has been set.
My understanding is that the entire area is still infected with the herpes virus that killed the last baby they had. Any new baby elephants are sure to contract it again. But the zoo is apparently willing to continue to put the animals at risk of a horrible sickness on the off chance that one might turn out to be immune. I don’t think it’s very good science.
Have they tried doing it with her on top? I heard that can totally work.
Q: What’s grey and comes in quarts?
A: A bull elephant on an EE probe.
all elephants to the ozarks. let them establish free-roaming herds with winter refuges.
it’s better than feral pigs.
Elephants have culture and complex families. They use tools. They They mourn their dead. It’s undeniable elephants have complex emotional lives. Forcing one to go through multiple miscarriages is horribly cruel.
I love seeing the elephants but it is so obvious that they are miserable so it isn’t so fun anymore. Watching one pace over and over in a small area is just so depressing. Then you add in the repeated attempts at getting an elephant pregnant and it sounds like exquisite hell for those animals.
They are absolutely miserable. They don’t have territory, they don’t have a herd, they don’t have anything that any elephant in the wild has, and now they live in a herpes-infested corral. One has even lost its tusk — according to a docent there’s nothing wrong, it just dropped off, we don’t know why, nothing to see here, move along smile smile.
Imagine you live in a 4 by 4 cell with no hope of escape, and every day somebody comes in and jams a turkey baster in your vagina. (also imagine you’re female) Yeah, those elephants are just fine.
@8: Try visiting the zoo before you let your imagination run wild, okay?
And parents, if you really want your kids to learn about animals, why don’t you pick up some zoobooks and read to them? If you’re just looking for a place to let your kids run around and scream, there are plenty of playgrounds that you don’t have to pay to get into. Take them there.
@9- Have you seen the Woodland Park Zoo’s elephant enclosure? It’s not very big and most of it isn’t usable space for the elephants. 4×4 might be a bit of an exaggeration, maybe 16×16.