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The Sad Reality Behind Those Cute Baby Elephants at the Zoo

The Sad Reality Behind Those Cute Baby Elephants at the Zoo

The Louisville Zoo in Kentucky recently announced that Mikki, a 32-year-old African elephant, is pregnant. What the Zoo did not share, however, is that this pregnancy was forced upon Mikki through repetitive, clumsy, and very invasive Artificial Insemination (AI) attempts. 

Records from the Zoo, which ranked #4 on our Ten Worst Zoos for Elephants list this year, revealed that in less than a 2-year period between 2014 and 2016, the Zoo made nine artificial insemination attempts and performed three “practice” sessions on Mikki. This involved Mikki having one front leg chained, and both of her rear legs tethered with ropes, keeping her immobilized, and unable to move so that her keepers' attempted penetrations into her three-foot long reproductive track would prove “successful”.

Since Mikki’s 3-year-old son, Scotty, died of colic in 2010 — a pregnancy that was also forced upon her through AI — the Louisville Zoo has been repeatedly attempting to impregnate her again. Baby elephants mean big bucks for zoos. 

Conception through AI has a low rate of success. According to a 2012 Seattle Times report on captivity, “success has been spotty, with miscarriages and premature and stillborn deaths from artificial-insemination pregnancies reaching 54 percent”. It is because elephants breed so poorly in captivity that many zoos resort to these invasive, abusive, artificial insemination practices to force pregnancies that will only occasionally produce money-making babies.

There is no real “natural” mating at zoos either. Zoos shuffle bull elephants around the country like chess pieces with the hope they will mate with females. This is horribly cruel and exploitive of these males whose welfare and vital social bonds are disregarded as they are treated as living “vessels” of sperm.

In captive elephants, the infant mortality rate is a shocking 40%. EEHV, a fatal herpes virus that attacks elephants under the age of ten, is yet another risk that zoos continue to conveniently overlook as they continue to breed by any means. Recklessly experimenting with elephant’s lives is what some zoos call “conservation.” 

AI is yet one more reason why zoo captivity for elephants is such a cruel and unnatural existence.  Don’t support zoos, or fall for their false conservation claims. Support conservation — and conception — in the wild, not in captivity. The more people gush over these zoo babies, the more zoos will continue to use them to manipulate the public, keeping them blind to the horrible cruelty of AI that is forced on far too many female elephants in zoos.

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