Horrors elephants won't forget Brian Sewell, London Evening Standard, 29th October 2002. The elephant, said Rudyard Kipling, is a gentleman. But the elephant in Blackpool zoo is Milton's beast, "the unwieldy elephant" of Paradise Lost, the elephant that to make us laugh uses "all his might and wreaths his lithe proboscis". And why, clowning, does he wreath his lithe proboscis, open his great mouth as though in a guffaw and raise a great flat foot as though to shake our hands? Because each of his two keepers, men with the mien of soccer hooligans, prods him with an ankus to urge him to perform his tricks, and an ankus is a "an elephant hook" sufficiently sharp to produce pain enough through that thick hide to make the great beast respond, not willingly, but with obedience. Our headlines last week were devoted to the 700 Muscovites held hostage and the sexual mishaps long ago of a fading middle-aged celebrity in Proustian mood, all of it man's utterly predictable inhumanity to man and, therefore, unremarkable, none of it as futile in its cruelty as the torment of the elephant. The elephant was in the news because the RSPCA, not before time, issued a report on its welfare in zoos, and one broadsheet chose to illustrate its summary with the animal in Blackpool zoo. The photograph was wonderfully explicit, the hooks of the ankus sharp and clear, the expression of the elephant easily interpreted by an anthropomorphist as human laughter. Laughter, however, is far from the reality, for the prick of the ankus reminds the beast of pain far worse: of the electric cattle prod that was the first instrument in his education, the means of breaking him from a simple exhibit captured from the wild into a circus performer to amuse the Blackpool visitor in daylight hours, when the more sophisticated pleasures of that ghastly place are not available. But this is not a circus; this is a zoo, a place, it is so often argued, of conservation, education and research, a place that with breeding programmes will ensure, against all the odds of the polluted world in which natural habitat is constantly reduced by the demands of man, the survival of endangered species. Were it a circus, the Blackpool elephant's conditions would be even worse, shackled by one forefoot and one hind foot into near immobility when not performing in the ring, standing in its turds and urine as it is trucked from one roll-up, roll-up place to another and the next, release into the ring the only freedom that it ever has, there to make itself ridiculous. At least the Blackpool beast has an enclosure in which to roam, though roam is not quite the word for freedom to move about in what, in human terms, is a single room with matching patio, but no front door to open on the world. The zoo elephant cannot forage for itself, cannot with its lithe proboscis reach into a tree, cannot wade into a water-hole for the pleasure of a bath. Nothing that an elephant does daily in the wild can be done in a zoo enclosure. Why then is he there? What possible benefits to education and research can there be in having the great beast as an unnatural exhibit? Is it a matter of town pride to own an elephant? If so, then we revert to the medieval folly of the menageries of kings and emperors who exchanged rare animals as readily as relics of the saints. Are we really so silly as to think that the elephant's "little eyes express his unaffected thankfulness" for the supposed comforts of captivity, far away from poachers who would slaughter him for his ivory or, as in modern Zimbabwe, for his edible flesh? What comforts? Those of a tropical animal trapped in the cold damp north, arthritis, madness and an early death. Elephants are herd animals for which the life-long bond of the family group is the natural society - but never in zoos. Deprived of the habitual and intuitive interactions of the family, the elephant born in captivity is overweight, unhealthy, infertile, suffers stress and dies at 15 instead of more than 50. Is this science? Is it education? Is it conservation? Is it kind? If it is none of these, why in England have we 90 elephants in zoos, most alone or in pairs, and why in civilised Europe have we 400 more? But it is not only the keeping of elephants that we should question. What quality of life has a giraffe in a concrete enclosure, polar bear, a bear of any kind, any animal indeed that is a rover over distances that are, on foot, far beyond the abilities of man? Are apes happy in a treeless zoo? Are birds? The one-wattled cassowary in Regent's Park was, on my last visit, the perfect example of grubby, bedraggled misery. I am aware of the argument that not until a child has seen animals in a zoo, been awed by the size of them, heard them grunt and growl and fart, watched them empty bowels and bladders, pinched his nostrils to shut out body odours, will he truly be aware of what an animal is, the argument that no television programme is a substitute for the real thing, just as shopping at the supermarket is no introduction to the reality of the cow, the pig, the lamb. But the real thing in the zoo may be half mad, its behaviour far from natural, its enclosure a prison, not a habitat. The tiger, cheetah and leopard tread the same few paces a thousand times a day, weaving figures of eight; squatting apes rock from side to side, elephants stand and sway; in captive animals we see irrefutable evidence of psychotic behaviour never witnessed in the wild, the consequence of boredom, lack of stimulus, frustration and imprisonment inflicted by man. What is to be said for zoos? Not much even for small animals when we consider the needs of the domestic dog, but the zoo is marginally better than the circus, where cruelty is inevitable in the urgencies of the business - witness the recent prosecutions here. As for other countries, I shall never forget the bewildered baby elephant walloped and dragged through Gottingen to advertise a circus, nor the ragged lions and tigers of a circus in Puy-de-De; I shall never forget the dancing bears of Turkey nor the dog-baited bears of Pakistan, and as for the 7,000 caged bears milked of their bile in China for the benefit of superstitious medicines or slaughtered for their paws... But I digress. We have a Labour Party besotted with the fox, but in terms of animal welfare it should have larger targets for reform; our ill-treatment of farm animals has proved too ambitious an object for its revolutionary zeal, too close-tied to the corrupting subsidies of Europe, but it could raise the issue of zoo and circus animals at a pan-European level and could attempt to remedy their plight. Such reform, however, does not have about it the frisson of class hostility that lends such zest to their save-the-fox campaign. As for practical measures, at £25,000 a year to keep an elephant, Europe now spends £12.5 million, almost half as much again as Kenya spends on wildlife management. Add the cost of keeping all other animals in zoos and it is immediately evident that were we to contribute that level of funding to wildlife reserves in the countries from which they came, we should indeed be involved in all that zoos claim as their justification, conservation, science, education and survival, conserving habitat too, with none of the deprivations and inherent cruelties of the urban zoo. Paradise Regained? WHAT YOU CAN DO
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