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Ignorance Is Bliss: My Day At Six Flags
A behind-the-scenes look at the elephants and dolphins at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom in Vallejo, CA. The video is 4 min.
IGNORANCE IS BLISS
MY DAY AT SIX FLAGS
Imagine a five year old girl sunk in a velvety movie theater seat in 1952, clutching her bitty box of jujubes, crying for Dumbo, whose jailed mother rocks him with her trunk stuck through a prison-barred window. That was me. A half a century later, I’m preparing my campaign to free the elephants at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom, formerly known as Six Flags Marine World (Six Flags). When I saw an ad on their website for a new program, Trainer For a Day, I signed up immediately.
Six Flags Discovery Kingdom, though owned by The City of Vallejo, is managed by Six Flags Theme Parks, Inc., and exists to improve the value of its stock. It promotes an image of family fun, education, and conservation. Six Flags is not a shabby amusement park. A cross between Disneyland, a county fair, Marine World and a Zoo - which it actually is, approved by the American Zoo and Aquarium Association (AZA) - you pay $50 for the day. It has a number of programs that customers can buy into to enhance their experience. Programs such as Trainer for a Day, offer the customer extra pleasure and exclusive access to animals, but the real point is to make more money. For example, for a fee, you can feed a seal or pet a dolphin, or for more money, sit on the edge of the pool and play with the dolphins. For even more, you can be a Trainer For A Day. Whatever level of customer investment, it all adds up to animal exploitation.
I spent three hours with the elephants and three with the dolphins. My day as a trainer began at “Tava’s Elephant Encounter “. I was shocked by how clean everything was. The yard, the barn, the pool, and even the elephants themselves were immaculate. The aura of the exhibit was having the desired effect on me, like a magical song, “Everything is wonderful for these elephants and every step has been taken to make them happy, la la la.” I found my right brain thinking, “This isn’t so bad”, countered by my left, “What are you thinking? This is a prison!”
A description of the Six Flags elephant herd from my assigned trainer, Patrick:
Liz, Asian, 43. The San Diego Zoo sold her to Six Flags thirteen years ago saying she was a bully and had no personality. Now she is the Alpha elephant and a “big goof”. She likes to eat, is lazy, and a big baby. She has no friends but hangs out with Taj.
Taj, Asian, 67, worked in circuses, zoos, and at Moorpark College in Southern California, where there is an exotic animal training and management curriculum. She came to Six Flags thirty years ago and now is on her last set of teeth.
Valerie, African, 25, is a “sweetheart and follows you around.” She and Bertie-May, Asian, 26, came to Six Flags two years ago. They lived together in a trailer for fifteen years, traveling around with their owners and performing in various shows.
Tava, African, 29, arrived from Africa at the age of two after being “rescued” from a culling. She is very smart, manipulative, uses tools, and knows if you have food.
Malika, African, 20, came from Zimbabwe, surviving a culling at the age of two. She is a “little princess” and hangs out with Tava.
Joyce, African, 22, was sold to Six Flags two years ago by a private owner. She is smart and sometimes swims with Bertie.
The elephants, overall, looked good. They were clean; their feet looked relatively healthy; they could all walk without problems; I didn’t observe any bullhook wounds or “bedsores”; their eyes appeared healthy; and they seemed weighty enough. I asked Patrick if they had health problems. He said there were none because their care was so good. I wondered about the prednisone listed on the board for one of the elephants. The rash of euthanizations in the ‘90s due to arthritis and joint problems makes his rosy picture hard to believe.
1999: Judy, 33, was euthanized because of leg deformities.
1998: Ginny was euthanized at 58 after suffering from chronic arthritis.
June 1996: Twenty-seven-year-old Bandula was euthanized because of chronic arthritis and severe joint pain.
November 1995: Mardji, a 44-year-old African elephant, was euthanized after suffering from chronic bone inflammation.2
The elephant yard is small for seven elephants and completely devoid of vegetation. In the wild, elephants forage most of the day and like to throw grass and dirt on their heads and bodies. These elephants are not provided with the opportunity to rip grass, leaves, and bark with their trunks or throw around vegetation and dirt. Sometimes they forfeit part of their precious allotment of food for tossing. At least they have dirt to stand on, and a shady shelter to stand under. They have access to a cement pond but no one went near it while I was there. Apparently it is deep enough for them to submerge themselves sideways. The barn has separate stalls for each elephant and a concrete floor. One stall had a softer material stapled to it. Patrick said they are kept in there at night (ten hours) when the weather is bad, but otherwise stay in the yard day and night. The only restraints I saw were the big bars in the barn and the fences in the yard. No observable chains.
The saddest scene of the day was the morning elephant feeding. We divvied out about two quarts of dog food-like elephant pellets into seven buckets and set them in a line, four feet apart in the yard. The trainers lined up the elephants, trunks holding tails, and marched them in an indirect circle to the buckets where the elephants stood, docile, trunks up, foot up, circus style, until they were given permission to eat.
They also get an occasional mound of alfalfa, a daily bale of hay and fresh, human-grade fruit and vegetables as treats. Unlike the inhabitants in two sanctuaries in Thailand which I recently visited where the elephants were given bushels of fruit and vegetables every day in addition to endless mounds of vegetation, each Six Flags elephant is given only one bunch of bananas, one orange, a few sweet potatoes, a few carrots, and one apple per day, and no fresh fodder.
The trainers claim that the elephants get plenty of walking exercise, pointing out that when food is abundant in the wild, elephants don’t walk tens of miles a day. But saying it doesn’t make it so. Walking two miles around the park after hours on asphalt next to a man with a bullhook, or giving rides around a one-sixteenth of a mile track for hours, will not fulfill the natural desire of elephants to travel all day with family, searching for food and water.
The noise from the rides doesn’t bother the elephants, according to Patrick. He doesn’t notice it anymore, so they don’t either. Can he hear like an elephant, through the soles of his feet?
The trainers at Six Flags are not smarmy carnies. Patrick is a UC Davis graduate in biology and animal sciences, who began working with the two Asian elephants at the Santa Barbara Zoo when he was 12. All are clean-cut, athletic types. But as I also found typical of the mahouts in Thailand, they often lack respect for their animals. One told me that Tava is “really dumb”. Steve, who has worked with Six Flags elephants for 26 years, described the elephants as “his family” because he spends more time with them than with his own family. But does he love them? “No. They don’t love back.” According to Steve, it is wrong to attribute human emotions to animals. His daughter thinks she loves her dog but the dog doesn’t love her, he says. Elephants don’t love. They care for their young, but they don’t love them. “I don’t think any of the trainers love the elephants.”
Of all the information the trainers gave me, the greatest emphasis was on the importance and justification for training, which they legitimized for making medical checks easy and stress-free for the elephants, and for the continued safety of the elephants and people. They described the ubiquitous bullhooks as “an extension of my arm” or “like a leash for a dog”. Several trainers said the bullhook doesn’t hurt the elephant at all due to their one inch thick skin, defending this falsehood even after I questioned it. “It is nothing more than an annoyance,” Patrick assured me, “like an itch.” But if they are using it only to guide, why do they need the sharp metal point and hook? For the elephant’s safety? For its stress-free medical check ups?
Neither in Thailand nor at the Performing Animal Welfare Society (PAWS) in San Andreas, California, have I seen such meek, compliant elephants. Without hesitation, the elephants obeyed their masters’ quiet words. But as a group, they did not interact as a normal herd of females would. I did not observe any socializing between them. In contradiction to his statement that various elephants were pals with one another, Patrick said that each one stayed to herself and they did not socialize as a cohesive herd. They all seemed dazed and withdrawn, as if on drugs, standing still in the yard, doing nothing. I returned a few days later and saw two of the elephants swaying stereotypically. Once I saw some of them acting like normal elephants by reaching out to touch Taj when she returned from her morning greeting duty at the park entrance. But they were mute. When elephants are comfortable and social, they rumble, squeak, and trumpet. Patrick said they don’t need to communicate because they are not foraging or roaming long distances. But all I can wonder is how long you could cage me before I too went mute.
No one can deny that training is essential for using animals as entertainment, and entertainment is Six Flag’s most lucrative product. In one show Liz moves logs, has a tug of war with members of the audience, and ends with her eating elephant-sized kibble from little children’s hands. One of the trainers described the other daily show as exercise for the elephants. For example, he told me with a straight face, when they sit up, it’s good ab work.
Each elephant show ends with a few sentences about the need for elephant conservation and how the audience can help by taking the proffered International Elephant Foundation (IEF) brochure. IEF is a non-profit that primarily focuses on breeding programs in zoos worldwide and management of wild elephants in Asia and Africa. The Six Flags conservation program consists of donating money to IEF. They believe that breeding in captivity contributes to conservation in the wild because, according to Steve, almost everything we know about elephants in the wild started with captive breeding programs. “There were animals in zoos that are now extinct because people didn’t make an effort to learn how to breed them and keep them around.”
In order to combat this, Patrick said they hope to breed the three younger elephants sometime in the future. “The North American elephant herd is aging,” he said, ”and will need to be replaced.” Six Flags’ tragic history with baby elephants must have slipped his mind:
March 2003: Misha's calf was stillborn.
November 2002: Tika, a 24-year-old African elephant, died from a massive infection caused by a dead calf decomposing in her womb.
October 2002: A baby elephant died during labor.
November 2000: Six Flags ignored warnings that a still-nursing baby elephant named Kala should not be separated from his mother at Dickerson Park Zoo. Severely stressed and traumatized, 2-year-old Kala died from a viral infection just six months after the move. 4
Close contact between elephants and park-goers abounds. Standing unnaturally still as a statue, Taj welcomes them at the entrance. In defiance of the AZA policy recommendation against elephant rides, a few dollars will buy you one at Six Flags. Because the elephants are so docile and obedient, I can see why the trainers feel confident that everyone is safe. However, this is a false security. Elephants mixing with the public are accidents waiting to happen, and Six Flags should know this well.
In June 2004, an elephant keeper was critically injured after being gored by an elephant named Misha at Six Flags Marine World. Six Flags uses cruel, outdated circus-style training. Elephants are punished with bullhooks and forced to give rides and perform tricks. It comes as no surprise to PETA that a frustrated Misha snapped and attacked a keeper for the second time. In June 2001, Misha attacked a keeper during invasive artificial insemination procedures. In 1991, five people were injured during elephant rides at Marine World, and in 1993, an elephant rampaged and threw a rider onto a cement path, resulting in a $600,000 settlement. 3
When the photographer was taking my picture with Liz, the trainers encouraged me to get close to her and put my arm around her trunk. Her only actions were circus poses: open mouth, trunk up, foot raised. I loved hugging her but I felt mortified. Perhaps the elephants are bored out of their minds because there is so little enrichment, just two hanging tires, a shallow pool, and onlookers snapping photos
As I left “Tava’s Elephant Encounter,” I felt overwhelmed by their belief that this is a wonderful place. I walked away thinking that if anyone criticized their elephant exhibit, they would say with disbelief, "But it's so clean, and the elephants are SO well trained and happy."
I spent the afternoon with the dolphins. The zoo maintains four walruses, 12 dolphins, and one orca. The trainers are all women, mostly with degrees in marine biology. They obviously love their wards and enjoy training them. Like Patrick, my trainer, Becky, emphasized that the real purpose of the training was for medical checks and procedures. They take blood regularly and since the animals are so well trained, says Becky, the procedures are “stress-free”. But if they are concerned about stressing the dolphins, why do they keep them in smooth little pools, urban pools, that bear no resemblance to natural habitat? Why then do they expose them constantly to crowds of humans clamoring to touch them? Why do they keep them at all?
In a private workshop on how to train a dolphin, I learned that they work with positive reinforcement of the correct movements while ignoring the wrong ones. The trainer uses body motions to signal a trick. If the dolphin does anything close to what the trainer wants, he gets a “bridging” signal (a whistle) and a small reward. Eventually, when the dolphin figures out what the trainer wants and does it, he gets the bridge and then a big reward, a human-grade, thawed fish. All feeding is done in conjunction with training.
The role-playing I did in this workshop was phenomenally revealing. To play the role of the trainer, all I needed was a little patience. But as the dolphin, I had to try endlessly to figure out what the trainer wanted. I walked this way. I walked that way. I walked toward door one. Whistle. I walked to the door. No whistle. I walked toward door two. Whistle. I walked to the door. No whistle. This went on and on until I finally figured out she wanted me to go to the wall phone and lift the receiver. I was intensely focused on her and felt tension and stress trying to read her mind. In order to get the food reward, I had to successfully figure out what she was thinking. Had I been hungry, had my access to sustenance actually been tied to this, I could not imagine the level of stress this would have caused.
“Wow,” I said, “I felt so stressed out trying to read your mind.”
Becky laughed. “Sometimes they get to do any trick they want for the reward,” she said, sidestepping my point.
“You’re a happy guy, aren’t you?” she cooed at the mirthful-looking dolphin, using a hand sign to make the animal nod in agreement.
“Dolphins aren’t smiling,” I thought with disgust, “they look like this even when they’re dead.” I have to admit that I adored the dolphins, but my willingness to do tricks with them didn’t last very long. Even playing ball with the two-year old baby, made me feel sad.
I spent the day with people, both park-goers and employees, who sincerely believe that the animals in the park are in the best of all possible worlds. To my question, “Are the elephants happy?” Patrick answered, “Yep. They love us. We play with them. They’d be dead if they weren’t here.”
Let’s face it, most people are urbanites, invested in the tenants of modern urban life and its “improvements” over wilderness. It is clean. There are few threats or risks. Food and water are abundant. Advancing this belief for wild animals is a simple step.
Once I understood the mindset of the park people, all I could think was, “Ignorance is bliss.” As long as they believe the animals are happy, they can continue to work within their captivity. The idea that animals are miserable chattel, unable to fulfill their true nature in any manner, would be an absurd concept to them. Sadly there is little difference between their belief that the elephants and dolphins are happy in a zoo and 18th century slave ship owners claiming that the “the time passed on board a ship, while transporting from Africa to the colonies, was the happiest part of a negro’s life.” 1 Just as 18th Century people believed slavery was key to their economic survival, the majority today believe they can not live without animals for food, entertainment, and drug testing. Animal rights is the abolition movement of the 21st century.
After struggling for the last time to extricate myself from my wetsuit, I passed through the pool area, which was now abandoned. The dolphin I had interacted with was there, swimming around and around his little pool. Dolphins and elephants swim or walk forty miles a day in the wild. Instead of roaming freely, eating, playing and socializing with their families all day, as captives they are forced to be circus caricatures of themselves, forever assaulted by the flatness of their pens, the glare of the lights, and noisy roller coaster cars.
However, there is hope today for captive elephants in North America. Zoos are scrambling to contend with evolving public opinion, which has risen against elephants and other large mammals in zoos. Thirteen zoos have either closed their elephant exhibits and sent their elephants to sanctuaries, or plan to shut them down when their elephants have died. With enough public pressure, maybe the Six Flags Seven will someday join the lucky, emancipated elephants in sanctuaries.
1 Hochschild, Adam, Bury the Chains, New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 2005
2 http://www.savewildelephants.com/sixflags.asp
4 Ibid.
3 Ibid.
MY DAY AT SIX FLAGS
Imagine a five year old girl sunk in a velvety movie theater seat in 1952, clutching her bitty box of jujubes, crying for Dumbo, whose jailed mother rocks him with her trunk stuck through a prison-barred window. That was me. A half a century later, I’m preparing my campaign to free the elephants at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom, formerly known as Six Flags Marine World (Six Flags). When I saw an ad on their website for a new program, Trainer For a Day, I signed up immediately.
Six Flags Discovery Kingdom, though owned by The City of Vallejo, is managed by Six Flags Theme Parks, Inc., and exists to improve the value of its stock. It promotes an image of family fun, education, and conservation. Six Flags is not a shabby amusement park. A cross between Disneyland, a county fair, Marine World and a Zoo - which it actually is, approved by the American Zoo and Aquarium Association (AZA) - you pay $50 for the day. It has a number of programs that customers can buy into to enhance their experience. Programs such as Trainer for a Day, offer the customer extra pleasure and exclusive access to animals, but the real point is to make more money. For example, for a fee, you can feed a seal or pet a dolphin, or for more money, sit on the edge of the pool and play with the dolphins. For even more, you can be a Trainer For A Day. Whatever level of customer investment, it all adds up to animal exploitation.
I spent three hours with the elephants and three with the dolphins. My day as a trainer began at “Tava’s Elephant Encounter “. I was shocked by how clean everything was. The yard, the barn, the pool, and even the elephants themselves were immaculate. The aura of the exhibit was having the desired effect on me, like a magical song, “Everything is wonderful for these elephants and every step has been taken to make them happy, la la la.” I found my right brain thinking, “This isn’t so bad”, countered by my left, “What are you thinking? This is a prison!”
A description of the Six Flags elephant herd from my assigned trainer, Patrick:
Liz, Asian, 43. The San Diego Zoo sold her to Six Flags thirteen years ago saying she was a bully and had no personality. Now she is the Alpha elephant and a “big goof”. She likes to eat, is lazy, and a big baby. She has no friends but hangs out with Taj.
Taj, Asian, 67, worked in circuses, zoos, and at Moorpark College in Southern California, where there is an exotic animal training and management curriculum. She came to Six Flags thirty years ago and now is on her last set of teeth.
Valerie, African, 25, is a “sweetheart and follows you around.” She and Bertie-May, Asian, 26, came to Six Flags two years ago. They lived together in a trailer for fifteen years, traveling around with their owners and performing in various shows.
Tava, African, 29, arrived from Africa at the age of two after being “rescued” from a culling. She is very smart, manipulative, uses tools, and knows if you have food.
Malika, African, 20, came from Zimbabwe, surviving a culling at the age of two. She is a “little princess” and hangs out with Tava.
Joyce, African, 22, was sold to Six Flags two years ago by a private owner. She is smart and sometimes swims with Bertie.
The elephants, overall, looked good. They were clean; their feet looked relatively healthy; they could all walk without problems; I didn’t observe any bullhook wounds or “bedsores”; their eyes appeared healthy; and they seemed weighty enough. I asked Patrick if they had health problems. He said there were none because their care was so good. I wondered about the prednisone listed on the board for one of the elephants. The rash of euthanizations in the ‘90s due to arthritis and joint problems makes his rosy picture hard to believe.
1999: Judy, 33, was euthanized because of leg deformities.
1998: Ginny was euthanized at 58 after suffering from chronic arthritis.
June 1996: Twenty-seven-year-old Bandula was euthanized because of chronic arthritis and severe joint pain.
November 1995: Mardji, a 44-year-old African elephant, was euthanized after suffering from chronic bone inflammation.2
The elephant yard is small for seven elephants and completely devoid of vegetation. In the wild, elephants forage most of the day and like to throw grass and dirt on their heads and bodies. These elephants are not provided with the opportunity to rip grass, leaves, and bark with their trunks or throw around vegetation and dirt. Sometimes they forfeit part of their precious allotment of food for tossing. At least they have dirt to stand on, and a shady shelter to stand under. They have access to a cement pond but no one went near it while I was there. Apparently it is deep enough for them to submerge themselves sideways. The barn has separate stalls for each elephant and a concrete floor. One stall had a softer material stapled to it. Patrick said they are kept in there at night (ten hours) when the weather is bad, but otherwise stay in the yard day and night. The only restraints I saw were the big bars in the barn and the fences in the yard. No observable chains.
The saddest scene of the day was the morning elephant feeding. We divvied out about two quarts of dog food-like elephant pellets into seven buckets and set them in a line, four feet apart in the yard. The trainers lined up the elephants, trunks holding tails, and marched them in an indirect circle to the buckets where the elephants stood, docile, trunks up, foot up, circus style, until they were given permission to eat.
They also get an occasional mound of alfalfa, a daily bale of hay and fresh, human-grade fruit and vegetables as treats. Unlike the inhabitants in two sanctuaries in Thailand which I recently visited where the elephants were given bushels of fruit and vegetables every day in addition to endless mounds of vegetation, each Six Flags elephant is given only one bunch of bananas, one orange, a few sweet potatoes, a few carrots, and one apple per day, and no fresh fodder.
The trainers claim that the elephants get plenty of walking exercise, pointing out that when food is abundant in the wild, elephants don’t walk tens of miles a day. But saying it doesn’t make it so. Walking two miles around the park after hours on asphalt next to a man with a bullhook, or giving rides around a one-sixteenth of a mile track for hours, will not fulfill the natural desire of elephants to travel all day with family, searching for food and water.
The noise from the rides doesn’t bother the elephants, according to Patrick. He doesn’t notice it anymore, so they don’t either. Can he hear like an elephant, through the soles of his feet?
The trainers at Six Flags are not smarmy carnies. Patrick is a UC Davis graduate in biology and animal sciences, who began working with the two Asian elephants at the Santa Barbara Zoo when he was 12. All are clean-cut, athletic types. But as I also found typical of the mahouts in Thailand, they often lack respect for their animals. One told me that Tava is “really dumb”. Steve, who has worked with Six Flags elephants for 26 years, described the elephants as “his family” because he spends more time with them than with his own family. But does he love them? “No. They don’t love back.” According to Steve, it is wrong to attribute human emotions to animals. His daughter thinks she loves her dog but the dog doesn’t love her, he says. Elephants don’t love. They care for their young, but they don’t love them. “I don’t think any of the trainers love the elephants.”
Of all the information the trainers gave me, the greatest emphasis was on the importance and justification for training, which they legitimized for making medical checks easy and stress-free for the elephants, and for the continued safety of the elephants and people. They described the ubiquitous bullhooks as “an extension of my arm” or “like a leash for a dog”. Several trainers said the bullhook doesn’t hurt the elephant at all due to their one inch thick skin, defending this falsehood even after I questioned it. “It is nothing more than an annoyance,” Patrick assured me, “like an itch.” But if they are using it only to guide, why do they need the sharp metal point and hook? For the elephant’s safety? For its stress-free medical check ups?
Neither in Thailand nor at the Performing Animal Welfare Society (PAWS) in San Andreas, California, have I seen such meek, compliant elephants. Without hesitation, the elephants obeyed their masters’ quiet words. But as a group, they did not interact as a normal herd of females would. I did not observe any socializing between them. In contradiction to his statement that various elephants were pals with one another, Patrick said that each one stayed to herself and they did not socialize as a cohesive herd. They all seemed dazed and withdrawn, as if on drugs, standing still in the yard, doing nothing. I returned a few days later and saw two of the elephants swaying stereotypically. Once I saw some of them acting like normal elephants by reaching out to touch Taj when she returned from her morning greeting duty at the park entrance. But they were mute. When elephants are comfortable and social, they rumble, squeak, and trumpet. Patrick said they don’t need to communicate because they are not foraging or roaming long distances. But all I can wonder is how long you could cage me before I too went mute.
No one can deny that training is essential for using animals as entertainment, and entertainment is Six Flag’s most lucrative product. In one show Liz moves logs, has a tug of war with members of the audience, and ends with her eating elephant-sized kibble from little children’s hands. One of the trainers described the other daily show as exercise for the elephants. For example, he told me with a straight face, when they sit up, it’s good ab work.
Each elephant show ends with a few sentences about the need for elephant conservation and how the audience can help by taking the proffered International Elephant Foundation (IEF) brochure. IEF is a non-profit that primarily focuses on breeding programs in zoos worldwide and management of wild elephants in Asia and Africa. The Six Flags conservation program consists of donating money to IEF. They believe that breeding in captivity contributes to conservation in the wild because, according to Steve, almost everything we know about elephants in the wild started with captive breeding programs. “There were animals in zoos that are now extinct because people didn’t make an effort to learn how to breed them and keep them around.”
In order to combat this, Patrick said they hope to breed the three younger elephants sometime in the future. “The North American elephant herd is aging,” he said, ”and will need to be replaced.” Six Flags’ tragic history with baby elephants must have slipped his mind:
March 2003: Misha's calf was stillborn.
November 2002: Tika, a 24-year-old African elephant, died from a massive infection caused by a dead calf decomposing in her womb.
October 2002: A baby elephant died during labor.
November 2000: Six Flags ignored warnings that a still-nursing baby elephant named Kala should not be separated from his mother at Dickerson Park Zoo. Severely stressed and traumatized, 2-year-old Kala died from a viral infection just six months after the move. 4
Close contact between elephants and park-goers abounds. Standing unnaturally still as a statue, Taj welcomes them at the entrance. In defiance of the AZA policy recommendation against elephant rides, a few dollars will buy you one at Six Flags. Because the elephants are so docile and obedient, I can see why the trainers feel confident that everyone is safe. However, this is a false security. Elephants mixing with the public are accidents waiting to happen, and Six Flags should know this well.
In June 2004, an elephant keeper was critically injured after being gored by an elephant named Misha at Six Flags Marine World. Six Flags uses cruel, outdated circus-style training. Elephants are punished with bullhooks and forced to give rides and perform tricks. It comes as no surprise to PETA that a frustrated Misha snapped and attacked a keeper for the second time. In June 2001, Misha attacked a keeper during invasive artificial insemination procedures. In 1991, five people were injured during elephant rides at Marine World, and in 1993, an elephant rampaged and threw a rider onto a cement path, resulting in a $600,000 settlement. 3
When the photographer was taking my picture with Liz, the trainers encouraged me to get close to her and put my arm around her trunk. Her only actions were circus poses: open mouth, trunk up, foot raised. I loved hugging her but I felt mortified. Perhaps the elephants are bored out of their minds because there is so little enrichment, just two hanging tires, a shallow pool, and onlookers snapping photos
As I left “Tava’s Elephant Encounter,” I felt overwhelmed by their belief that this is a wonderful place. I walked away thinking that if anyone criticized their elephant exhibit, they would say with disbelief, "But it's so clean, and the elephants are SO well trained and happy."
I spent the afternoon with the dolphins. The zoo maintains four walruses, 12 dolphins, and one orca. The trainers are all women, mostly with degrees in marine biology. They obviously love their wards and enjoy training them. Like Patrick, my trainer, Becky, emphasized that the real purpose of the training was for medical checks and procedures. They take blood regularly and since the animals are so well trained, says Becky, the procedures are “stress-free”. But if they are concerned about stressing the dolphins, why do they keep them in smooth little pools, urban pools, that bear no resemblance to natural habitat? Why then do they expose them constantly to crowds of humans clamoring to touch them? Why do they keep them at all?
In a private workshop on how to train a dolphin, I learned that they work with positive reinforcement of the correct movements while ignoring the wrong ones. The trainer uses body motions to signal a trick. If the dolphin does anything close to what the trainer wants, he gets a “bridging” signal (a whistle) and a small reward. Eventually, when the dolphin figures out what the trainer wants and does it, he gets the bridge and then a big reward, a human-grade, thawed fish. All feeding is done in conjunction with training.
The role-playing I did in this workshop was phenomenally revealing. To play the role of the trainer, all I needed was a little patience. But as the dolphin, I had to try endlessly to figure out what the trainer wanted. I walked this way. I walked that way. I walked toward door one. Whistle. I walked to the door. No whistle. I walked toward door two. Whistle. I walked to the door. No whistle. This went on and on until I finally figured out she wanted me to go to the wall phone and lift the receiver. I was intensely focused on her and felt tension and stress trying to read her mind. In order to get the food reward, I had to successfully figure out what she was thinking. Had I been hungry, had my access to sustenance actually been tied to this, I could not imagine the level of stress this would have caused.
“Wow,” I said, “I felt so stressed out trying to read your mind.”
Becky laughed. “Sometimes they get to do any trick they want for the reward,” she said, sidestepping my point.
“You’re a happy guy, aren’t you?” she cooed at the mirthful-looking dolphin, using a hand sign to make the animal nod in agreement.
“Dolphins aren’t smiling,” I thought with disgust, “they look like this even when they’re dead.” I have to admit that I adored the dolphins, but my willingness to do tricks with them didn’t last very long. Even playing ball with the two-year old baby, made me feel sad.
I spent the day with people, both park-goers and employees, who sincerely believe that the animals in the park are in the best of all possible worlds. To my question, “Are the elephants happy?” Patrick answered, “Yep. They love us. We play with them. They’d be dead if they weren’t here.”
Let’s face it, most people are urbanites, invested in the tenants of modern urban life and its “improvements” over wilderness. It is clean. There are few threats or risks. Food and water are abundant. Advancing this belief for wild animals is a simple step.
Once I understood the mindset of the park people, all I could think was, “Ignorance is bliss.” As long as they believe the animals are happy, they can continue to work within their captivity. The idea that animals are miserable chattel, unable to fulfill their true nature in any manner, would be an absurd concept to them. Sadly there is little difference between their belief that the elephants and dolphins are happy in a zoo and 18th century slave ship owners claiming that the “the time passed on board a ship, while transporting from Africa to the colonies, was the happiest part of a negro’s life.” 1 Just as 18th Century people believed slavery was key to their economic survival, the majority today believe they can not live without animals for food, entertainment, and drug testing. Animal rights is the abolition movement of the 21st century.
After struggling for the last time to extricate myself from my wetsuit, I passed through the pool area, which was now abandoned. The dolphin I had interacted with was there, swimming around and around his little pool. Dolphins and elephants swim or walk forty miles a day in the wild. Instead of roaming freely, eating, playing and socializing with their families all day, as captives they are forced to be circus caricatures of themselves, forever assaulted by the flatness of their pens, the glare of the lights, and noisy roller coaster cars.
However, there is hope today for captive elephants in North America. Zoos are scrambling to contend with evolving public opinion, which has risen against elephants and other large mammals in zoos. Thirteen zoos have either closed their elephant exhibits and sent their elephants to sanctuaries, or plan to shut them down when their elephants have died. With enough public pressure, maybe the Six Flags Seven will someday join the lucky, emancipated elephants in sanctuaries.
1 Hochschild, Adam, Bury the Chains, New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 2005
2 http://www.savewildelephants.com/sixflags.asp
4 Ibid.
3 Ibid.
For more information:
http://mpjc.org/six_flags_elephants.html
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Perhaps it is a bit small for seven elephants, but it probably has more foliage in it then a comparable bit of Zimbabwean soil, trust me.
one key to elephant health is territory in which to roam. captive elephants notoriously get feet problems due to lack of space to roam and being forced to live their entire lives on hardened surfaces
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2007/03/21/18380928.php
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2006/06/10/18280071.php
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2005/03/30/30632.php
to put in simple terms, if you were in an elephant's shoes so to speak, would you rather all the food you can eat and live decades in a tiny cell being gawked at or be free even with the risks that entails?
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2007/03/21/18380928.php
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2006/06/10/18280071.php
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2005/03/30/30632.php
to put in simple terms, if you were in an elephant's shoes so to speak, would you rather all the food you can eat and live decades in a tiny cell being gawked at or be free even with the risks that entails?
I appreciate your honesty in your article and it must have taken some time. While I have never been to this park, I would have to think most if not all the zoos and amusement style animal attractions are similar to the experience you had. All such locations I have visited seem to have a sharp emphasis on "conservation" or "research to aid" these animals.
The sad and frustrating thing is that most of the animals in these parks and zoos are "rescued"... which basically means someone else took these animals from their natural habitat and subjected them to side shows and other inhumane treatment. When they get tired of it or the animals stop making money for them... they pawn them off on zoos and parks.
Now in your story, Six Flags has done a "great" thing by bringing these animals to them. They cannot be simply shipped home and expected to survive, they wouldn't last a week. I think you understand that... your issue is Six Flags (and zoos) make money off this.
I think there is no way to convince anyone to change beliefs they feel strongly about. It's like trying to change someone's religion or political beliefs... next to impossible. Six Flags is in business to make money... and they are doing so here. Things like what you discribed the park will do for an extra buck seem a little over the edge to me, but what's the end result? How many people do you know who have actually seen these animals in their natural environment? If they didn't see them in a zoo or a park, do you think they would have the respect and understanding they do for them? I think not. As a biology major, I see alot of the conservation angle and am proudly a supporter of animal rights. I'm not defending Six Flags, but I think operations like them do a valuable service to people like us. They help create MORE people like us. Sure there are those who are in it for the ride and the quick photo... but the vast majority of animal lovers like us begain that love with a visit to the zoo.
You are obviously upset by the treatment of these animals and think they should all be in their natural environment. I agree... in a perfect world, that would be great. Unfortunately many of these animals cannot return or never knew what a natural environment was. Businesses who make money off of the "performances" of these animals do a service. That doesn't mean I like it or approve of it... but it does help create awareness and education... neither of which are bad for conservationists.
The sad and frustrating thing is that most of the animals in these parks and zoos are "rescued"... which basically means someone else took these animals from their natural habitat and subjected them to side shows and other inhumane treatment. When they get tired of it or the animals stop making money for them... they pawn them off on zoos and parks.
Now in your story, Six Flags has done a "great" thing by bringing these animals to them. They cannot be simply shipped home and expected to survive, they wouldn't last a week. I think you understand that... your issue is Six Flags (and zoos) make money off this.
I think there is no way to convince anyone to change beliefs they feel strongly about. It's like trying to change someone's religion or political beliefs... next to impossible. Six Flags is in business to make money... and they are doing so here. Things like what you discribed the park will do for an extra buck seem a little over the edge to me, but what's the end result? How many people do you know who have actually seen these animals in their natural environment? If they didn't see them in a zoo or a park, do you think they would have the respect and understanding they do for them? I think not. As a biology major, I see alot of the conservation angle and am proudly a supporter of animal rights. I'm not defending Six Flags, but I think operations like them do a valuable service to people like us. They help create MORE people like us. Sure there are those who are in it for the ride and the quick photo... but the vast majority of animal lovers like us begain that love with a visit to the zoo.
You are obviously upset by the treatment of these animals and think they should all be in their natural environment. I agree... in a perfect world, that would be great. Unfortunately many of these animals cannot return or never knew what a natural environment was. Businesses who make money off of the "performances" of these animals do a service. That doesn't mean I like it or approve of it... but it does help create awareness and education... neither of which are bad for conservationists.
Let's face it, Six Flags is not going to get rid of the elephants or dolphins. But what they should do is improve the envornments. Take the Oakland Zoo for example. They went from one of the worst zoos in the country to one of the best. I just hope that Six Flags can change their ways and strive for better animals envorments.
Better envornments also make for a much better guest experience. Beautiful exhibits improve the guest experience and the animals lives.
Better envornments also make for a much better guest experience. Beautiful exhibits improve the guest experience and the animals lives.
Great video and article! Keep up the good work! :)
For more information:
http://www.njerisims.net/blog/
ideally, yes, never taken from or bred outside of their homeland
once already captured and mistreated, though, they can also be placed in sanctuaries that offer much more space and, while not their exact natural environment, offer much better living conditions than most zoos, circuses, or entertainment parks
once already captured and mistreated, though, they can also be placed in sanctuaries that offer much more space and, while not their exact natural environment, offer much better living conditions than most zoos, circuses, or entertainment parks
you claim that the elephants have no enrichment and live barren lives in environments void of a natural feel. you claim that they are just captives that don't enjoy their life. I tend to disagree with you and many others who would like to believe this idealistic reality that fits YOUR world! these elephants are living the good life. Out in the wild many elephants have to walk and forage for food for so many hours and walk so many miles not because they want to, because they HAVE to, to find adequate amounts of food to maintain their health. The amount consumed, weight wise, by a wild elephant will exceed the captive elephant due to the poor quality of the food available. If provided with properly calculated and researched diet, that is top quality, the amount is no longer in terms of weight but as nutrients. If a human were provided with poor quality food, they would need much more than a person provided with high quality food. The elephants are not required to seach out fresh clean drinkable water, it is provided for them. they do not have to worry about a drought that would not provide them with enough water to satisfy that thirst. The ground they stand on in their yard is dirt, proving them the ability to dig and throw dirt. They naturally live in areas that have harder packed dirt than what they have access to. Their pens are kept clean, santitary and allow for movement and interaction with eachother. they are able to stretch their legs and move about. They do not have to constantly worry about being out in the wild, being suprised and have the chance encoutner with a poacher (or has poaching been overlooked by you?) that could leave them dead. They can stay in a comfortable environment that allows these elephant the opportuinty to lay down and sleep, or sleep however they are comfortable. These girls are provided with forage as it is avalable. Many occasions I have looked in on them to see them with huge branches they are stripped bark from, snapping wrist sized limbs with their feet and the fencing. They are provided with items for enrichment every season, pumpkins in the fall, trees to consume and play with around Christmas time, in addition to their daily diets.
The common misconception about elephants is that their gentle and docile naturally. Elephants will kill things for no other reason than that they can. They are intellegent enough to know their size and know their strenghts compared to we puny creatures. Misha realized her power and followed instinct when goring her trainer. She then figured out that she was able to push anyone and anything around. Although they know they can kill their handlers, they have created a bond, much like any animal will do, and respect and seek out that attention they get from their friends/trainers. For you to claim Steve has spent so many years with these elephants and not think of them as true family is blasphmous! If a person is willing to spend more time with animals than their own kids that shows they do love more than they're willing to show. His point of view on the elephants loving humans, well that is one opinion. But if you look at actions over words, those actions (his dedication to these elephants for so many years and the personal sacrifice of losing time with family for these animals) speak a much different tune. He loves those elephants more than he's saying. His point, he loves them, but they aren't capable of loving him back.
I think you fail to realized the fact that there are many big important facts you have overlooked when discussing the head and the past elephants in regards to the euthansions and breeding programs. You have targeted and used Liz in many of your protests against this park. You fail to realize that before she came here, she was a problem child who couldn't play nice. She has come to this park and her trainers have made her comfortable enough to be a companion for Taj, she is able to show her true personality and likes playing. Many times I have observed her, Taj and Bertie Mae playing in the pool. She was not able to do this where she came from. That speaks volumes! Taj, she is on her last set of teeth but she is now the oldest elephant in any of the accredited parks and zoos in North America. She has surpassed the average life expanctancy of elephants. She is almost 70 years old, goes for walks, and still loves her pool time. How could it possibly be so horrible and so bad for these animals if she's happy and has the will to survive as long as she has? She is given everything possible to maintain her heath, to make it easier for her overall with the onset of old age. Patrick is correct that the North American herd is aging, and each old elephant is given everything possible for their comfort and happiness. You point out the arthritis in the euthanasia. Did you know that leg deformities are herditary or envornmental results in the womb? Did you see any of these leg problems? If you have an elephant that has one leg way shorter than the other, there's a strong possiblity that arthritis will occur. This is no different than humans. Bandula and Judy had severe leg deformities that were closely watched and maintained to the best as humanly possible. Had these girls been born in the wild these deformities would have cost them their life and they would not have made it to the ages they did. Ginny was 58! average life span is mid to late 40s, early 50s! As with aging humans, as you get older it's harder to move. How can you penalize an organization that has tried everything to maintain each elephant, to keep them sound and comfortable? When pain and lack of movement is no longer managable they do the humane thing, end their suffering. There should be no penalty for such actions! In the last few years many animals aside from these girls have been humanly euthanized when pain is uncontrolable and unmanagable, such as Barbaro the Throughbred race horse. You also mention Mardji. Again when age begins creeping up on you, many illnesses or bone problems happen. I have no doubt that the dedicated staff did everything in their power to fix her. The inflamation could have come from anything! But if a staff is unable to control the pain, why continue a situation where the animals suffers? You want to make these men look like monsters but the problem is, you can't see through the tough exterior to see that these men are dedicated and infatuated and love these animals as much if not more than their families. Now to address the breeding program, many people do not know that elephants can control their estrous cycle and can terminate a pregnacny as they deem it necessary. They can turn on and off cycling. Much is still unexplainable about their reproductive tract. There are many intances where there are still born births and complications in birthing that can cause the deaths of both mother and calf. As for Tika, there were carcasses found and examined by scientists years ago with unexplainable anamolies. Amazingly enough they were finding mummified calves in the wombs of the females that had been sealed over. They can terminate a pregnancy if there is a complication they can determine. For all that we know, she could have terminated it for whatever reason, much like the human body will miscarry if there are defects in that fetus. Again I have no doubt that she was cared for to the best of the handler and veternary staff's ability in attempt to pull her though. Problems like this arise in any speices across the globe.
I personally think that you attacking a company for truly loving and caring to the best of their ablity for these animals is an unjust and vindictive thing. Unfortunately you are not trying to help them, you are working against them. Why not work hand in hand with the park to better facilitate these girls and help them with the continuted conservational efforts? Put your efforts towards protecting the wild ones. The bonds created with these elephants and humans are more complicated and deep than you can ever imagaine to understand. They are able to provide and ensure the health and mental stablility of these girls. They work closely that they can notice something before it progresses into the life threatening issues. Stop believing that it's so horrible. Would you rather live in fear constantly or feel secure? They are tended to physically, and mentally daily! They are loved and cared for. Why would you want their normality to drascially change and cause them stress? Changing what they know is stressful to any animal. You will never be able to truly grasp the concepts of the interaction of animal and trainer until you fill those shoes. Yes you have you opinion and are feely able to express it. Everyone is entitled to their own, I would only suggest you stop pushing your on to misinformed people and get them behind the efforts to save the speices. These girls are the amabassidors for their wild relatives. As with any animal, the people must see each spieces with their own eyes before they are motivated to activly help. Stop trying to take away their amazing presence to make it a more mystical and awe-inspring facination. Use a hands on way of pushing for the continued existance and help make their life better.
The common misconception about elephants is that their gentle and docile naturally. Elephants will kill things for no other reason than that they can. They are intellegent enough to know their size and know their strenghts compared to we puny creatures. Misha realized her power and followed instinct when goring her trainer. She then figured out that she was able to push anyone and anything around. Although they know they can kill their handlers, they have created a bond, much like any animal will do, and respect and seek out that attention they get from their friends/trainers. For you to claim Steve has spent so many years with these elephants and not think of them as true family is blasphmous! If a person is willing to spend more time with animals than their own kids that shows they do love more than they're willing to show. His point of view on the elephants loving humans, well that is one opinion. But if you look at actions over words, those actions (his dedication to these elephants for so many years and the personal sacrifice of losing time with family for these animals) speak a much different tune. He loves those elephants more than he's saying. His point, he loves them, but they aren't capable of loving him back.
I think you fail to realized the fact that there are many big important facts you have overlooked when discussing the head and the past elephants in regards to the euthansions and breeding programs. You have targeted and used Liz in many of your protests against this park. You fail to realize that before she came here, she was a problem child who couldn't play nice. She has come to this park and her trainers have made her comfortable enough to be a companion for Taj, she is able to show her true personality and likes playing. Many times I have observed her, Taj and Bertie Mae playing in the pool. She was not able to do this where she came from. That speaks volumes! Taj, she is on her last set of teeth but she is now the oldest elephant in any of the accredited parks and zoos in North America. She has surpassed the average life expanctancy of elephants. She is almost 70 years old, goes for walks, and still loves her pool time. How could it possibly be so horrible and so bad for these animals if she's happy and has the will to survive as long as she has? She is given everything possible to maintain her heath, to make it easier for her overall with the onset of old age. Patrick is correct that the North American herd is aging, and each old elephant is given everything possible for their comfort and happiness. You point out the arthritis in the euthanasia. Did you know that leg deformities are herditary or envornmental results in the womb? Did you see any of these leg problems? If you have an elephant that has one leg way shorter than the other, there's a strong possiblity that arthritis will occur. This is no different than humans. Bandula and Judy had severe leg deformities that were closely watched and maintained to the best as humanly possible. Had these girls been born in the wild these deformities would have cost them their life and they would not have made it to the ages they did. Ginny was 58! average life span is mid to late 40s, early 50s! As with aging humans, as you get older it's harder to move. How can you penalize an organization that has tried everything to maintain each elephant, to keep them sound and comfortable? When pain and lack of movement is no longer managable they do the humane thing, end their suffering. There should be no penalty for such actions! In the last few years many animals aside from these girls have been humanly euthanized when pain is uncontrolable and unmanagable, such as Barbaro the Throughbred race horse. You also mention Mardji. Again when age begins creeping up on you, many illnesses or bone problems happen. I have no doubt that the dedicated staff did everything in their power to fix her. The inflamation could have come from anything! But if a staff is unable to control the pain, why continue a situation where the animals suffers? You want to make these men look like monsters but the problem is, you can't see through the tough exterior to see that these men are dedicated and infatuated and love these animals as much if not more than their families. Now to address the breeding program, many people do not know that elephants can control their estrous cycle and can terminate a pregnacny as they deem it necessary. They can turn on and off cycling. Much is still unexplainable about their reproductive tract. There are many intances where there are still born births and complications in birthing that can cause the deaths of both mother and calf. As for Tika, there were carcasses found and examined by scientists years ago with unexplainable anamolies. Amazingly enough they were finding mummified calves in the wombs of the females that had been sealed over. They can terminate a pregnancy if there is a complication they can determine. For all that we know, she could have terminated it for whatever reason, much like the human body will miscarry if there are defects in that fetus. Again I have no doubt that she was cared for to the best of the handler and veternary staff's ability in attempt to pull her though. Problems like this arise in any speices across the globe.
I personally think that you attacking a company for truly loving and caring to the best of their ablity for these animals is an unjust and vindictive thing. Unfortunately you are not trying to help them, you are working against them. Why not work hand in hand with the park to better facilitate these girls and help them with the continuted conservational efforts? Put your efforts towards protecting the wild ones. The bonds created with these elephants and humans are more complicated and deep than you can ever imagaine to understand. They are able to provide and ensure the health and mental stablility of these girls. They work closely that they can notice something before it progresses into the life threatening issues. Stop believing that it's so horrible. Would you rather live in fear constantly or feel secure? They are tended to physically, and mentally daily! They are loved and cared for. Why would you want their normality to drascially change and cause them stress? Changing what they know is stressful to any animal. You will never be able to truly grasp the concepts of the interaction of animal and trainer until you fill those shoes. Yes you have you opinion and are feely able to express it. Everyone is entitled to their own, I would only suggest you stop pushing your on to misinformed people and get them behind the efforts to save the speices. These girls are the amabassidors for their wild relatives. As with any animal, the people must see each spieces with their own eyes before they are motivated to activly help. Stop trying to take away their amazing presence to make it a more mystical and awe-inspring facination. Use a hands on way of pushing for the continued existance and help make their life better.
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