A Visit to the National Zoo

Today I attended a regular elephant keeper talk at the Smithsonian National Zoo... Here's what I found out.

This is a me in front of two of the zoo's female elephants!

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This blog post is a little bit more informal but I wanted to come on and tell you all about my experience visiting the elephant exhibit at the Smithsonian National Zoo. The zoo hosts twenty-minute talks with an elephant keeper twice a day at the elephant outpost so I decided to take advantage of what Washington D.C. has to offer, and attend one in-between my classes.

The talk itself was pretty casual and some of the information presented I had already learned through research. Either way, here are some of the facts I learned about the zoo's elephants specifically, as well as elephants in general:

• The Smithsonian National Zoo has only Asian elephants - six females and one male

• The zoo hopes that male Spike (age 37) and female Maharani (age 27) will breed soon (how amazing would it be if we saw a baby elephant in the next four years?!)

• Asian elephants are different from African elephants: they have two humps on their head rather than one, they are smaller in body and ear size, only some males have tusks rather than both males and females having them, and Asian elephants have more hair on them than African elephants

• Female elephants have a two year pregnancy

• Males will grow up with their mom and aunt's and then depart to form bachelor group's at the age of maturity

• At the Smithsonian National Zoo female elephants are given "howdy access" to Spike at nights so that they can touch and smell each other but it avoids putting females in a potentially dangerous situation with Spike

• The zoo's herd is not completely natural because three of the female elephants came from the Calgary Zoo in Canada - the zoo references these three elephants as the Calgary girls and have been working to intertwine them with the National Zoo's elephants for the past four years (and will continue to)

• the National Zoo has a two hour elephant lockout maximum from inside enclosures in order to clean the buildings but to also make sure the elephants do not get too cold

Unfortunately, I was not able to get the name of the elephant keeper, but I was able to ask her a few questions. The keeper was originally from Missouri and worked at a zoo there but moved to Washington D.C. this past June with her husband. She started working at the Smithsonian National Zoo in October.

QUESTION: "What made you want to work with elephants and the Smithsonian National Zoo?"

ANSWER: "I have always loved animals and I thought I wanted to be a vet for the longest time... I went to school for animal science but then I realized I was more interested in the behavioral aspect of taking care of animals. My senior year I did an internship at the zoo and I followed all of its areas but I fell in love with the elephant area. I just fell in love with the relationships the keepers had with the elephants... The Smithsonian specifically does so much with endangered species and hormonal studies and it's just a great facility. It's hard to get in the elephant area, though, because people don't leave. You just fall in love with the animals and then you don't move... The breeding program here really drew me in but other than that it's just where the elephants were so that's where I went... The Smithsonian (National Zoo) also does a lot of work with researchers in Shrilanka, which not all zoos have the ability to do too."

QUESTION: "Would you ever want to get involved in conservation efforts beyond the Smithsonian National Zoo?"

ANSWER: "Yes, defiantly. Once I get my bearings here, get more comfortable, and learn everything that they are involved with I'll probably branch out a little bit more. For now I'm just sticking with elephants, though, it's a lot of work."

Overall, it was great to visit the zoo and I am planning to go back next week to spend more time looking at the animals! I thought the elephant keeper talk was great and I would like to find more talks regarding the zoo's other species to go to another time because the personal interaction was a rewarding change from my previously online-based research work.

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