Two elephants are pregnant and are expected to give birth next year – but there will be only one father in the delivery rooms. Columbus Zoo and Aquarium in Ohio announced this week that for the first time in the zoo’s history two elephants, Phoebe and Sunny, are pregnant at the same time – a glimmer of hope for the Asian elephant conservation.
“This is a very exciting time for us as these pregnancies provide us with the opportunity to care for a multigenerational herd, which is beneficial for the elephants and their social dynamics,” said Adam Felts, senior curator of animal care and director of animal wellbeing.
Asian elephants, Sabu and Sunny, at Columbus Zoo in Ohio.
Amanda Carberry
He added the upcoming births help to ensure a genetically diverse and healthy population of elephants in North American zoos. Phoebe is already the mother of a 3-year-old calf Frankie and this is Sunny’s first pregnancy, the zoo said. The gestation period is 22 months, the zoo said.
The zoo said Sabu, an elephant bull that was temporarily staying in Columbus, fathered both calves as part of a species survival plan. According to the International Elephant Foundation, roughly 40,000 – 50,000 Asian elephants remain in the world.
Drought-stricken Namibia recently announced a plan to reduce wildlife – including 83 elephants – as a way to cut down on human-wildlife conflict.
“With the severe drought situation in the country, conflicts are expected to increase if no interventions are made,” officials said.
Asian elephants at Columbus Zoo in Ohio.
Amanda Carberry
The Columbus Zoo’s elephant herd currently consists of five elephants, the zoo said.
Cara Tabachnick is a news editor at CBSNews.com. Cara began her career on the crime beat at Newsday. She has written for Marie Claire, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal. She reports on justice and human rights issues. Contact her at cara.tabachnick@cbsinteractive.com
It turns out that humans might not be the only species that have individualized identifiers for each other. A new study found that African savanna elephants, an endangered species, have name-like calls for each other that resemble human names — a finding that potentially “radically expands the express power of language evolution.”
Researchers analyzed the rumble — “a harmonically rich, low-frequency sound that is individually distinct” — of African savanna elephants, which are listed as endangered on the IUCN Red List as populations continue to decline, largely due to poaching and land development. Specifically, researchers looked at 469 rumbles of three different types — contact, greeting and caregiving — from female-offspring groups between 1986 and 2022. Using a machine-learning model, they identified the recipients of more than 27% of those calls.
These elephants are known for traveling with family units of about 10 females and their calves, and several family units will often combine to form a “clan,” according to the World Wildlife Fund, with males only coming around during mating.
The researchers also looked at the reactions of 17 wild elephants to call recordings that were addressed to them or another elephant. The elephants who heard recordings addressed to them had quicker and more vocal responses than those who heard recordings addressed to other elephants, researchers found.
And what they found is that the elephants — the world’s largest terrestrial species, according to the World Wildlife Fund — do indeed have individual vocal identifiers, “a phenomenon previously known to occur only in human language.” Other animals known to use vocal labels, like parakeets and dolphins, solely do so through imitation, researchers said in the study, which was published Monday in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution.
Videos shared by researchers show how the elephants respond to call recordings addressed to them. In one, an elephant named Margaret appears to almost immediately perk up to a rumble recording addressed to her. In the video caption, researchers said she “immediately raises her head and then calls in response after a few seconds.” A separate video shows Margaret raising her head to a call addressed to another elephant, but not responding.
Another elephant named Donatella shows the animal issuing a call response after hearing her name and approaching the recording.
More research on these observations is needed, the study authors said, particularly to better understand the context surrounding the calls. But so far, these results have “significant implications for elephant cognition, as inventing or learning sounds to address one another suggests the capacity for some degree of symbolic thought,” they said.
African savanna elephants are found across nearly two dozen countries, including Botswana, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Kenya, Namibia, Zambia and South Africa. In 2021, this species, as well as its close relative, the African forest elephant, received degraded conservation status.
According to the IUCN, the forest elephant species was demoted to critically endangered, while the savanna elephant was listed as endangered, whereas before, both species were “treated as a single species” that was classified as vulnerable. The new status came after findings that forest elephant populations had declined by more than 86% over the course of 31 years, while savanna elephants declined by at least 60% in a half-century.
“With persistent demand for ivory and escalating human pressures on Africa’s wild lands, concern for Africa’s elephants is high, and the need to creatively conserve and wisely manage these animals and their habitats is more acute than ever,” assessor and African elephant specialist Kathleen Gobush said at the time.
Li Cohen is a senior social media producer at CBS News. She previously wrote for amNewYork and The Seminole Tribune. She mainly covers climate, environmental and weather news.
“Babar” author Laurent de Brunhoff, who revived his father’s popular picture book series about an elephant-king and presided over its rise to a global, multimedia franchise, has died. He was 98.
De Brunhoff, a Paris native who moved to the U.S. in the 1980s, died Friday at his home in Key West, Florida, after being in hospice care for two weeks, according to his widow, Phyllis Rose.
Just 12 years old when his father, Jean de Brunhoff, died of tuberculosis, Laurent was an adult when he drew upon his own gifts as a painter and storyteller and released dozens of books about the elephant who reigns over Celesteville, among them “Babar at the Circus” and “Babar’s Yoga for Elephants.” He preferred using fewer words than his father did, but his illustrations faithfully mimicked Jean’s gentle, understated style.
French cartoonist Laurent de Brunhoff presents his children’s book La victoire de Babar, featuring Babar the Elephant, for the 60th anniversary of the famous character. His father, Jean de Burnhoff, created Babar in 1932.
Pascal Le Segretain/Sygma via Getty Images
“Together, father and son have woven a fictive world so seamless that it is nearly impossible to detect where one stopped and the other started,” author Ann S. Haskell wrote in The New York Times in 1981.
The series has sold millions of copies worldwide and was adapted for a television program and such animated features as “Babar: The Movie” and “Babar: King of the Elephants.” Fans ranged from Charles de Gaulle to Maurice Sendak, who once wrote, “If he had come my way, how I would have welcomed that little elephant and smothered him with affection.”
De Brunhoff would say of his creation, “Babar, c’est moi” (“that’s me”), telling National Geographic in 2014 that “he’s been my whole life, for years and years, drawing the elephant.”
The books’ appeal was far from universal. Some parents shied from the passage in the debut, “The Story of Babar, the Little Elephant,” about Babar’s mother being shot and killed by hunters. Numerous critics called the series racist and colonialist, citing Babar’s education in Paris and its influence on his (presumed) Africa-based regime. In 1983, Chilean author Ariel Dorfman would call the books an “implicit history that justifies and rationalizes the motives behind an international situation in which some countries have everything and other countries almost nothing.”
“Babar’s history,” Dorfman wrote, “is none other than the fulfillment of the dominant countries’ colonial dream.”
Children’s author and illustrator Laurent de Brunhoff working at his home while being interviewed for the BBC television adaptation of his ‘Babar’ stories, Paris, September 1969.
Malcolm Winton/Radio Times via Getty Images
Adam Gopnik, a Paris-based correspondent for The New Yorker, defended “Babar,” writing in 2008 that it “is not an unconscious expression of the French colonial imagination; it is a self-conscious comedy about the French colonial imagination and its close relation to the French domestic imagination.”
De Brunhoff himself acknowledged finding it “a little embarrassing to see Babar fighting with Black people in Africa. He especially regretted “Babar’s Picnic,” a 1949 publication that included crude caricatures of Blacks and American Indians, and asked his publisher to withdraw it.
De Brunhoff was the eldest of three sons born to Jean de Brunhoff and Cecile de Brunhoff, a painter. Babar was created when Cecile de Brunhoff, the namesake for the elephant’s kingdom and Babar’s wife, improvised a story for her kids.
“My mother started to tell us a story to distract us,” de Brunhoff told National Geographic in 2014. “We loved it, and the next day we ran to our father’s study, which was in the corner of the garden, to tell him about it. He was very amused and started to draw. And that was how the story of Babar was born. My mother called him Bebe elephant (French for baby). It was my father who changed the name to Babar. But the first pages of the first book, with the elephant killed by a hunter and the escape to the city, was her story.”
The debut was released in 1931 through the family-run publisher Le Jardin Des Modes. Babar was immediately well received and Jean de Brunhoff completed four more Babar books before dying six years later, at age 37. Laurent’s uncle, Michael, helped publish two additional works, but no one else added to the series until after World War II, when Laurent, a painter by then, decided to bring it back.
1931: Cecile de Brunhoff and her two sons Mathieu and Laurent, who followed on as the author and illustrator of Babar.
Yves Forestier/Sygma via Getty Images
“Gradually I began to feel strongly that a Babar tradition existed and that it ought to be perpetuated,” he wrote in The New York Times in 1952.
De Brunhoff was married twice, most recently to the critic and biographer Phyllis Rose, who wrote the text to many of the recent “Babar” publications, including the 2017 release billed as the finale, “Babar’s Guide to Paris.” He had two children, Anne and Antoine, but the author did not consciously write for young people.
“I never really think of children when I do my books,” he told the Wall Street Journal in 2017. “Babar was my friend and I invented stories with him, but not with kids in a corner of my mind. I write it for myself.”
And, lo, before the flood, the Lord said to Noah, “make yourself an ark… bring out every kind of living creature.” That was the Old Testament. But what happens today when disaster threatens animals? A powerful force—a zoo, a foreign government, even the U.S. Department of Justice—often calls from on high and enlists the services of one man: Pat Craig, founder of The Wild Animal Sanctuary in Colorado… who’s emerged as the go-to guy for orchestrating high-stakes rescues around the world. Last spring, we accompanied this modern-day Noah to a zoo in Puerto Rico, for his most ambitious mission yet.
These lions were once—literally—the pride of Puerto Rico. Housed at the Dr. Juan A. Rivero Zoo in the coastal town of Mayaguez, the only zoo on the island. But after years of decline, mismanagement and neglect… this was the tableau that greeted Pat Craig and his wife Monica when they arrived here from Colorado.
Jon Wertheim: What was your impression when you got to the zoo for the first time?
Monica Craig: The animals were very, very sad-looking and, some of them were very, very sick. I felt physically and emotionally overwhelmed.
Pat Craig: And even while we were there, animals died almost on a weekly basis.
Monica Craig: Correct.
Pat Craig: So that felt even worse, because we’re present, and yet we were there too late.
Pat and Monica Craig
60 Minutes
Over the course of a decade, the U.S. Department of Agriculture cited the zoo two dozen times for substandard conditions and animal mistreatment.
After hurricanes Irma and Maria ravaged the island, the zoo closed to the public in 2018. For the more than 300 winged…scaled…and four-legged residents still captive, the situation turned from bad, to downright desperate.
Monica Craig: We saw a zebra that had a horrible wound on her leg and her tail and she couldn’t stand up. We saw a pig that had a skin condition, her skin was just falling apart.
A mountain lion’s untreated cancer had been allowed to spread all over its body.
Monica Craig: Seeing the mountain lion suffering the way that he was, that broke my heart. And not being able to– sorry (crying).
Pat Craig: Yeah, help him. Yeah. It was just so evident that this facility was way beyond repair.
The U.S. Department of Justice—which enforces federal animal welfare laws in the states and Puerto Rico—agreed… and in February, staged an extraordinary intervention, sending a battalion of agents to the zoo…to evacuate every single species to permanent homes on the mainland.
To lead this mission—to captain this ark, as it were—the DOJ tapped Wild Animal Sanctuary founder Pat Craig.
We were there in April to witness the operation: equal parts military-style logistics and battlefield extraction. Among the targets: seven lions sweltering in a concrete bunker.
Wild Animal Sanctuary founder Pat Craig
60 Minutes
Pat Craig: And they never hooked up the power after the hurricane. They never hooked up the power to the zoo.
Monica Craig: Never.
Jon Wertheim: Wait, wait, wait, there’s a zoo that’s functioning with animals therE, and there’s no power?
Monica Craig: No electricity.
Pat Craig: No power. And then if you look at the pictures from the inside of their building, you know, it’s old steel bars just like jail cells, all in a row.
When it came time to coax the cats out of their cages, Craig entered the lion’s den.
Jon Wertheim: I gather the lions weren’t necessarily happy to see you and go with you. What happened?
Pat Craig: They’re definitely defensive, because they don’t know who we are, and what we’re doing and why. And so, we show up and we’re like, “Believe me, you’ve got to trust me, we’re trying to help you here.”
The sweet-talking didn’t work, so they deployed plan b: sedation… hard to watch, but accepted practice when rescuing uncooperative carnivores.
Over the course of five months, Craig and his team of 20 used patience…prodding… pursuit… and…grape jelly… to lure each animal into its custom-built crate. A camel… a kangaroo… a rhinoceros…. these stubborn hippos.
Monica Craig, a native Spanish speaker, had hoped to coordinate with the local staff… but the team from Colorado mostly had to go it alone… she says, the zookeepers in Puerto Rico often refused to help.
Monica Craig: We tried many, many days to communicate with them and trying to tell them, “Hey, we’re not bad people, were just trying to do what we’re supposed to be doing for these animals and give them a better home.”
Monica Craig and her husband, Pat Craig, removed animals from a Puerto Rico zoo after it was shuttered.
60 Minutes
Jon Wertheim: What was their response to that?
Monica Craig: They were upset. They were like, “No, I don’t think– I don’t think that’s right. The animals belong here.”
It was a sentiment shared by many in the community, and at times resistance curdled into outright sabotage.
The rescue team had nearly wrangled Mundi, once a star attraction, into her transport crate, when suddenly…
Pat Craig: Out of nowhere, this elephant– just flies up, tears out of there, starts runnin’ around.
Jon Wertheim: What do you think happened?
Pat Craig: Well, I think somebody shot her with a BB gun, if you ask me.
Jon Wertheim: And hit her in the rear end?
Pat Craig: Hit her in the rear end, just to make her hate that crate.
Monica Craig: Yeah.
Pat Craig: Now she thinks that crate did something to her.
We reached out to Puerto Rico’s Department of Natural and Environmental Resources, which is responsible for the zoo. In a statement, it said the animals were provided with comprehensive care, and denied there was any neglect… blaming problems at the zoo on hurricane damage, limited resources and aging animals.
Once the transport was finally ready: a police escort to the airport. Then the animals were loaded, one by one, onto charter flights bound for new homes Craig had arranged at sanctuaries across the U.S.
Mundi the elephant
60 Minutes
How do you ferry to safety an 8,000-pound elephant like Mundi? On a 747 cargo jet of course.
Departure brought a sigh of relief.
Monica Craig: When she took off, I cried because I said, “Thank you God, she’s in, it’s over, and she’s out of here. There’s no question about it anymore.”
Pat and Monica Craig took as many of the rescues as they could back to their 1,200-acre facility. A vast menagerie roams the grassy enclosures on the high planes of eastern Colorado.
Each of the 700-plus animals here came with a sad backstory… wagging their own tales of woe, as it were. Tigers kept in garages as pets. Lions saved from a zoo in war-torn Ukraine. Bears abused at a Korean medical facility.
Now 64, Craig got the idea for the place as a teenager in the 1970s, when a friend who worked at a zoo gave him a tour behind the scenes.
Pat Craig: There were all these animals, lions, and tigers that were in small cages. And he said, “These will be euthanized.” And I thought, “Wow, this is crazy, you know? These are healthy and not– they’re not old. They’re not sick.”
Craig decided right then and there to open his own sanctuary on his parents’ small Colorado farm. With few regulations to guide him, he built the animal enclosures himself and scoured biology books for pointers.
Jon Wertheim: Did you have any experience with lions and tigers?
Pat Craig: No, no, none.
Jon Wertheim: You have a degree in zoology?
Pat Craig: No. I was just starting college back then. It was going to be a business degree. (laugh)
And he quickly learned that lions and tigers are no house cats.
Pat Craig: In the early years, I was in the hospital more times than you could count. It was like, “OK, don’t do that again.” And, you know, so all those years of making mistakes and not getting killed.
Jon Wertheim: What specifically does a mistake look like?
Pat Craig: Uh, pretty bad. I’ve had my left arm almost completely torn off. I’ve had– bit through the chest and collapsed lungs.
Jon Wertheim and Pat Craig
60 Minutes
The animals, Craig can handle. But on his missions to hostile environments around the world, it’s the people he often needs extra help managing.
Heavily-armed federal marshals accompanied Craig when the Department of Justice dispatched him to retrieve maltreated big cats that had been kept by the notorious Tiger King Joe Exotic—the unlikely Netflix sensation—and his associates. These two are among the 141 animals Craig liberated and brought back here.
Jon Wertheim: What kind of conditions was Joe Exotic keeping these guys in in Oklahoma?
Pat Craig: Well, you know, it was just all these really small cages that were just lion after lion because it was a gigantic breeding operation primarily.
The rescue missions and the sanctuary operate on an annual budget of $34 million, funding comes mostly from private donations.
When animals arrive here, this is oftentheir first stop… designed to minimize shock by mimicking the conditions they came from. Here, they’re evaluated and given a treatment plan. Whether it’s medication or emergency surgery. Craig and staff veterinarian, Dr. Mikaela Vetters introduced us to Chad and Malawi… both rescued from Puerto Rico.
Jon Wertheim: How confident do we feel about our locks here?
Dr. Mikaela Vetters: Confident.
Jon Wertheim: This guy wants to get out.
Pat Craig: She says, “Yeah.”
Jon Wertheim: This guy’s ready to hang out with us.
They suffer from permanent neurological damage, likely caused by malnutrition, something Craig could spot just by looking.
Pat Craig: You see how she keeps doing that? She just doesn’t have control over it.
Jon Wertheim: Head tilting at an angle.
Pat Craig: Yeah, we’ve had literally hundreds of lions that have come through that have had that kind of problem.
Jon Wertheim: You’ve seen this before?
Pat Craig: Oh yeah.
The sanctuary devises a special diet for each animal… which requires 100,000 pounds of food per week— mainly donated by nearby Walmarts… occasional cupcakes included.
When we met him, Mikey the bear, another asylum-seeker from Puerto Rico, was midway through his rehab.
Dr. Mikaela Vetters: Right now he’s in his lock-out just so we can medically manage him.
Jon Wertheim: What did you see the first time you saw him?
Dr. Mikaela Vetters: He was in a great deal of pain very gingerly moving. We assume he’s got, you know, a great deal of arthritis which we’ve provided medications for and now he’s getting around like– almost like a young bear.
Nursing animals like Mikey back to physical health is one thing. Ministering to their emotional wounds is often a bigger challenge. Having been raised in captivity, many of the animals arrive with what amounts to severe PTSD, and they must be taught to trust the humans caring for them.
Pat Craig: They’re already mad at people anyway because of whatever people had done. I had one tiger years ago that any time you came near he’d want to hit the fence and kill you.
Jon Wertheim: What’s the timetable for trying to ease some of the trauma these animals have been through?
Pat Craig: You know, some were beaten, some were starved, some were mentally tormented, to a degree, you know. And so every case is different. So some of them will do it in a matter of days, some will be a few weeks.
Jon Wertheim: Doesn’t that story imply however traumatic this may have been, it’s not irreversible.
Pat Craig: It’s not irreversible.
The goal of all this rehab is to get these wild animals to act the part.
Remember Mundi? At the zoo she had zero contact with other elephants for more than30 years. We accompanied Craig on a visit to a refuge in Georgia, where he placed Mundi under the care of conservationist Carol Buckley. This marked the first time Craig and the elephant had seen each other since Puerto Rico.
Jon Wertheim: What do you notice?
Pat Craig: Well, first thing she just looks so much healthier. And just her demeanor is so much calmer and nicer. Every day when I would go see her in the zoo, I just, God, I would just hurt. And then now to see this is just amazing. Just truly amazing.
Buckley provides the care and feeding, but happily admits Mundi’s real mentors are the other elephants here.
Jon Wertheim: You’re just the innkeeper.
Carol Buckley: That’s right. Hey, I just open and close doors and make sure the waters are running, you know? And, the other elephant knows what they need to learn. And they’re instructing them. It’s fantastic. It is exactly the same as what happens in the wild.
That’s the same principle Craig employs at his sanctuary, and after two months of rehab, the lions from Puerto Rico were ready to enter their permanent habitat.
A lion being released into its permanent habitat
60 Minutes
We were on hand for the release. No one quite knew what to expect. Not least, the lions.
The first was reticent. But one by one….they started to venture out… enclosed for their safety, and ours… but otherwise, in a vast ocean of green.
Jon Wertheim: These guys have been in captivity their whole lives. This is a first.
Pat Craig: Yeah, this’ll be the first time ever that they’ve been able to either run, or live in a big space like this, even have deep grass.
Jon Wertheim: Makes you feel good?
Pat Craig: Yeah, absolutely. This is why we do this.
There were a few scuffles…but for Pat Craig, that’s exactly what he’d hoped for: lions acting like, well, lions. The animals come to this sanctuary from all over the world. But in this unlikely setting—here, silhouetted by the Rockies in eastern Colorado—they find more than just sanctuary… they, finally, find a home.
Produced by David M. Levine. Associate producer, Elizabeth Germino. Edited by Joe Schanzer.
An elephant at the Los Angeles Zoo died this week, the second in about a year and just days before a vigil is set to be held by animal activists at the zoo to mourn elephants who have died in captivity.
Shaunzi, a 53-year-old female Asian elephant, was euthanized early Wednesday morning, according to zoo officials.
Around 8:30 p.m. Tuesday, Shaunzi was seen lying down in the exhibit she shared with the zoo’s other female elephant, Tina, and appeared unable to get up. Zoo veterinarians and care staff evaluated her condition, but efforts to help her were unsuccessful. She was sedated and subsequently put down.
“The decision to euthanize Shaunzi was a consensus decision made by her care team based on several factors including prognosis and welfare,” zoo officials said in an email. “These factors include her age, past medical history, her inability to right herself with supportive efforts to raise her” and other concerns.
“As a result, it was deemed the best for her welfare to let her go,” the statement concluded.
Shaunzi is the second L.A. Zoo elephant to die in about a year after Jewel, a 61-year-old female, was euthanized in January 2023 due to what zoo officials said was her declining quality of life. Asian elephants typically have a lifespan of 60 to 70 years in the wild, according to the International Fund for Animal Welfare.
The L.A. Zoo has two Asian elephants remaining: Tina, 58, who arrived at the zoo in 2010, and Billy, a 39-year-old male who has been at the zoo since 1989.
Shaunzi was born in 1970 in Thailand, where she lived for about a year before she was captured and used in circus work in the United States. In 1983, she was given to the Fresno Chaffee Zoo, where she lived before being transferred to the L.A. Zoo in 2017.
“Shaunzi lived a full life and was an ambassador for her species,” the zoo said in a statement on her passing. “She helped Angelenos learn about her wild counterparts and the challenges they face in their native range.”
Shaunzi’s death comes days before a group of animal welfare activists are set to hold the annual International Candlelight Vigil for Elephants outside the L.A. Zoo. The event is meant to honor the elephants who died in captivity over the last year at zoos and sanctuaries around the world, as well as highlight the host of problems they face compared with elephants in the wild, including medical issues such as arthritis and the bone infection osteomyelitis.
“The lack of space alone is extremely cruel, because their brains and their bodies are meant for walking huge distances,” said Courtney Scott, an elephant consultant for In Defense of Animals, one of the groups behind the event.
The vigil is set to take place from 5:30 to 7 p.m. Saturday outside the Los Angeles Zoo, at 5333 Zoo Drive. Zoo officials said they were aware of the event but declined to comment further.
Guinness World Records—the definitive list of world records of both human achievements and the extremes of the natural world—recently posted a eulogy to Tusko the elephant, who was tragically given an extreme dose of LSD, for science.
LSD research was conducted on animals such as dolphins or cats, starting in the ‘50s and ‘60s, with goals ranging from mind control to animal communication. A team of researchers in the early ‘60s came up with the brilliant idea of dosing a hormonal bull elephant with a massive dose of LSD, and lo and behold—the outcome was tragic.
Tusko was a male Indian elephant located at the Oklahoma City Zoo in Oklahoma. Tusko was a victim of the poor treatment of animals, and he did not survive the experiment.
But before his tragic end, Tusko earned a spot in the Guinness World Records. Other notable instances of massive LSD doses include a case study of an accidental dose during September 2015, when a woman took 55 mg of LSD—550 times the normal dose. But this animal was given 3,000 times the normal dose of LSD.
Within an hour and a half, and after several doses of barbiturates to kill the trip, the elephant was dead.
The Procedure
Beginning on Aug. 3, 1962, (1963 by some accounts) the researchers dosed an elephant. Researchers injected nearly 300 mg of LSD into Tusko.
Doctors West and Pierce attempted to induce Tusko into a state known as “musth”, an aggressive, hormonal surge that bull elephants get, causing them to secrete a sticky fluid between the ears. It’s critical for the reproduction of elephants as their testosterone levels rise to 60 times the normal amount.
“By way of a dart gun shot into his right buttock,” Guinness World Records writer Sanj Atwal wrote, “Tusko was injected with 297 milligrams of the hallucinogenic drug LSD. Almost 3,000 times greater than the normal human recreational dose, this remains the largest single dose of LSD administered ever.”
This ingenious plot was whipped up by two ambitious psychiatrists, Dr. Louis Jolyon West and Dr. Chester M. Pierce, along with the Oklahoma City Zoo’s director at the time, Warren Thomas. The experiment took place amid a surge in mind control experiments conducted by government agencies.
That’s when things went terribly wrong.
Five minutes after the injection, Tusko trumpeted once, fell over, and defecated.
He then suffered a serious seizure; his eyes rolled back and closed, his legs became stiff, he bit his tongue, and he struggled to breathe. It didn’t take long until the elephant was dead.
“Given that a human dose is around 25 milligrams, it comes as no surprise to hear that Tusko trumpeted once, ran around his enclosure then suffered a crippling seizure,’ Atwal continues. “He was administered a large dose of the antipsychotic drug promazine hydrchlroride, then the barbiturate pentobarbitol sodium, but died after 80 minutes, the victim of the largest single dose of LSD ever administered.”
“Dr. West was, put simply, an evil scientist,” Atwal writes. “He was a documented experimenter in Project MKUltra, an illegal human experimentation programme designed by the CIA to identify methods of brainwashing, psychologically torturing, and forcing confessions from people during interrogations.”
LSD Experiments Involving the Government
Beginning in 1953, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) launched Project MKUltra, a human drug experimentation involving hallucinogens, intended to develop procedures and identify drugs that could be used during interrogations to force confessions. The CIA attempted to develop more effective truth serums.
“These methods included sensory deprivation, hypnosis, isolation, sexual abuse, the covert administration of psychoactive drugs, and various other forms of torture,” Atwal writes. “One of the most famous experiments overseen by Dr West occurred in 1959, when Peter Tripp, a radio DJ, attempted to break the record for the longest time to stay awake. Tripp went without sleep for eight days and nine hours, causing his mental state to temporarily deteriorate into what doctors labeled ‘nocturnal psychosis’.”
Shortly after, drug experimentations would involve animals as well.
After the experiment on Tusko, West continued his work for the CIA, Guinness World Records reprots. Also in 1963, he was appointed as the psychiatrist to Jack Ruby, who murdered Lee Harvey Oswald two days after Oswald allegedly assassinated President John F. Kennedy.
West suggested that Ruby be interrogated under the influence of sodium thiopental and hypnosis in order to get the real story.
Pierce on the other hand went on to become the founding president of the Black Psychiatrists of America and spoke frequently about racism in the U.S., and he even coined the term “microaggression.”
A fitting end for a disturbing experiment at the expense of a rare Indian elephant.
An elephant in Kenya has given birth to a set of twins, a conservation group said on Friday, a rare event for the planet’s largest land mammals.
Save the Elephants said that the twins, both female, were born in the Samburu National Reserve in northern Kenya to a mother named Alto, describing it as “double joy.”
Twins make up only about one percent of elephant births, although another pair — one male and one female — were born in the same reserve in early 2022.
A video posted to social media by Save the Elephants, showed the baby elephants feeding from their mother, alongside other members of the herd with the caption: “Amazing odds!”
✨ Amazing odds! ✨
Almost two years after Bora from the Winds gave birth to twins for the first time in decades, Alto from the Clouds has astonished us with her own set of twins! Her two adorable female calves, estimated to be just days old, were first spotted by our researchers in Samburu National Reserve this week. 🐘 🐘
Twins are rarely encountered in elephant populations – and form around only 1% of births. Bora’s twins (male and female) were born during one of the worst droughts but despite her excellent mothering skills, the female twin sadly died. Elephant twins rarely survive in the wild but we’re optimistic about Alto’s twins as there’s lots of food in the park following the rains so Alto should be able to produce plenty of milk to feed her hungry brood plus she also has the amazing support of her herd. 🧡
With both the Winds and the Clouds families having produced twins, anticipation now turns to the Storms (no pressure!) to see if they can complete the trifecta, transforming it into a Triple Weather Bonanza! 😄
African elephants have the largest gestation period of any living mammal, carrying their young for nearly 22 months, and give birth roughly every four years.
However, elephant twins do not often fare so well. About two years ago, an elephant named Bora gave birth to twins in the Samburu National Reserve.
“Bora’s twins (male and female) were born during one of the worst droughts but despite her excellent mothering skills, the female twin sadly died,” Save the Elephants said in a Facebook post.
Rare elephant twins are seen after they were born to the Winds II elephant family as in the elephant world, twin births are very rare, representing about 1% of all births in the Samburu National Reserve, located 350 kilometers from Nairobi in Kenya on January 20, 2022.
Jane Wynyard/Save the Elephants/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
Still, the conservation group says it remains optimistic about the prospects for Alto’s babies.
“Elephant twins rarely survive in the wild but we’re optimistic about Alto’s twins as there’s lots of food in the park following the rains so Alto should be able to produce plenty of milk to feed her hungry brood plus she also has the amazing support of her herd,” the group wrote.
A previous pair of twins born in Samburu in 2006 failed to survive more than a few days.
The African savanna elephant is classified as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which says poaching and habitat destruction had a devastating effect on elephant numbers in Africa as a whole.
According to the Kenya Wildlife Service, there are more than 36,000 elephants in the East African country, with efforts to stem poaching halting a decline in numbers.
The elephant population in Kenya stood at 170,000 in the 1970s and early 1980s but plunged to only 16,000 by the end of 1989 because of the demand for ivory, it said.
The California Supreme Court is considering whether to grant a hearing for three elephants — Nolwazi, Amahle and Mabu — at the Fresno Chaffee Zoo. If granted, the hearing would determine whether these elephants are being unjustly detained, and whether they should be relocated to a sanctuary.
Elephants are sensitive, intelligent beings who feel joy and sorrow, have meaningful projects and relationships and often walk many miles per day in the wild. As a result, they tend to suffer in captive environments like zoos. When their freedom is restricted, they have an increased risk of developing joint disorders and damaged tusks. They also are more likely to experience boredom, depression and aggression.
Accordingly, the Nonhuman Rights Project, which submitted the petition, is urging the court to recognize that Nolwazi, Amahle and Mabu have a right to bodily liberty in a habeas corpus hearing, which can be used to determine whether their detention is lawful. Scholars in a wide range of fields, myself included, are submitting amicus letters to the court in support of the basic idea of elephant rights.
Why is it necessary to recognize elephant rights? Why not simply rely on existing welfare protections to prevent cruelty? When elephants are seen as lacking rights, we can protect them as “property” or as a matter of public interest. But such protections leave elephants vulnerable when their “owners” and the public are insufficiently concerned about them. By recognizing elephant rights, we can safeguard against abuse and neglect even when welfare protections are inadequate.
The idea of elephant rights is surprisingly minimal. When we say that elephants have rights, we are not necessarily saying that they have the same rights as us. (Among human beings, for example, infants have different rights than adults.) We also are not saying that they have duties. (Again, infants can have rights without duties.) Our claim is only that elephants can have rights that reflect their own interests and vulnerabilities.
Additionally, recognizing that elephants have a right to liberty does not necessarily mean releasing them into the wild; elephants, like humans, may not always be able to live independently. Instead, it simply means granting elephants as much freedom as possible for them. In the case of Nolwazi, Amahle and Mabu, that means being released to a sanctuary accredited by the Global Federation of Animal Sanctuaries.
Last year the Fresno Superior Court denied a similar petition for the elephants at the Fresno Chaffee Zoo because they are not being held in state custody, and the 5th District Court of Appeal denied a second petition. Now, the Nonhuman Rights Project is urging the California Supreme Court to decide that privately detained individuals, including elephants, can qualify for habeas relief too.
This case is not the first of its kind. The New York Court of Appeals recently considered a similar petition involving Happy, an elephant at the Bronx Zoo. In 2021, the court granted a hearing on Happy’s habeas claim, marking the first time that the highest court in an English-speaking jurisdiction allowed such a hearing for a nonhuman animal. But the court ultimately sided with the zoo.
Thus far, the rationalizations courts have used to reject elephant rights show little basis in logic or the law. For instance, the majority in the Happy case argued that you can have rights only if you have specific genes (why?) and only if you can have duties (again, what about infants?). They also suggested that you can access habeas relief only if you can live independently (once more: infants).
The majority in the Happy case also expressed concern about a slippery slope: If an animal in a zoo has the right to liberty, what about animals in farms and labs? And if those animals have that right, how can society still function? Perhaps a decision with this much disruptive potential is best made by legislatures.
However, as two dissenting judges noted, this buck-passing argument fails too. It might be ideal for legislatures to address this issue. But at present, few are willing to do so. In the meantime, the judiciary has a duty to assess each case before it on the merits. When a petitioner makes a credible allegation about an unjust detention, the relevant court should hear that case.
Moreover, if courts fear a slippery slope, the solution is not to ignore rights violations. Yes, when violations occur in large numbers, addressing them all might be disruptive. But to look the other way because of the scale of the problem would be to treat injustice, perversely, as too big to fail. Courts should instead make narrow rulings about particular violations, leaving the rest for another day.
To be sure, legislatures should address this issue too. Last month, Ojai became the first U.S. city to recognize legal rights for nonhuman animals when it passed an ordinance declaring that elephants have the right to liberty. Such legislation can work in tandem with, not replace, judicial attention to current unjust detentions.
The California Supreme Court needs to address the elephants in the room. However the judges decide this case, they should not refuse to hear it on the grounds that Nolwazi, Amahle and Mabu lack rights. Elephants, like humans, merit legal consideration for their own sake. Humans have both a right and a duty to give them their day in court.
Jeff Sebo is an associate professor of environmental studies, affiliated professor of bioethics, medical ethics, philosophy and law, and director of the animal studies master of arts program at New York University. His most recent book is “Saving Animals, Saving Ourselves.”
A beloved 3-year-old elephant calf born and raised at the Louisville Zoo died on Friday night, the zoo said in a news release.
Fitz would have turned four on Aug. 2, 2023, the zoo said, and was the offspring of 37-year-old Mikki, who also lives at the Kentucky-based Louisville Zoo.
Zoo staff first noticed that Fitz was lethargic on June 25. A blood sample was sent out and he was diagnosed with endotheliotropic herpesvirus, more commonly known as EEHV, a “hemorrhagic disease that aggressively affects blood cells,” the zoo said. There is no vaccine for the virus, and the survival rate is only 20 to 30% in most cases, the zoo said.
Fitz’s diagnosis with the illness was confirmed on June 28, and he was treated around-the-clock with care, including antiviral medications, plasma transfusions multiple times a day, and supportive therapies. Fitz received plasma and blood donations from elephants in zoos across the country, and other zoos and elephant experts reached out to the Louisville Zoo to offer support and advice.
Fitz’s condition took a turn for the worse on Friday evening, the zoo said, and he passed away shortly after 11 p.m. after a nighttime treatment.
Fitz at the Louisville Zoo.
The Louisville Zoo
“We are deeply saddened by the loss of elephant Fitz,” said Louisville Zoo Director Dan Maloney in a statement. “Fitz held a special place within our entire extended Zoo family. His presence at our Zoo touched the hearts of our members, patrons and our entire community, inspiring a profound appreciation for elephants and their conservation. Our animal and medical teams performed outstandingly. They worked tirelessly under very challenging circumstances, but sadly, despite their remarkable efforts, we were unable to save him. Fitz’s impact will live on, along with his memory, in the hearts of all who encountered him. He will be deeply missed.”
A necropsy will be performed, the zoo said. Additional information will be released once it is complete.
The zoo will also share information about plans for the community to honor Fitz.
According to the zoo, EEHV is “one of the most serious medical issues facing zoo and wild elephants.” Most elephants are believed to be born with the virus or exposed to it shortly after birth, but it can remain in an elephant’s body for years. The zoo said that it is “unknown” what causes the virus to cause hemorrhagic disease.
The zoo said that Mikki is also confirmed to have a “latent form” of EEHV, but “it is not the same strain that affected” her son. She appears to be behaving normally, the zoo said, as is the institution’s other elephant, Punch. Zoo staff will continue to monitor them, the news release said.
Tsuni the baby elephant made a splash at the Pittsburgh Zoo and Aquarium – and she certainly didn’t act like she was 900 pounds as she played in her bubble bath.
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There are examples from across the animal kingdom of medical marvels – animals whose behaviors and diet may point to ways in which humans might reduce heart disease, or ward off dementia. Correspondent Jonathan Vigliotti talks with Dr. David Agus, author of “The Book of Animal Secrets,” and Dr. Joshua Schiffman, who is exploring how an elephant’s genetics may offer clues to fighting off cancerous cells.
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A 70-year-old Indian woman was collecting water from a tubewell in her village when a wild elephant appeared out of nowhere and attacked her. She was rushed to the hospital but ultimately succumbed to her injuries. In the evening, when the family members were performing her last rites, the elephant arrived there suddenly and took the body from the pyre. The elephant again trampled her dead body, threw it, and fled.
Africa’s largest female tusker elephant has died. Dida, who is considered the matriarch of Tsavo East National Park in Kenya, died from natural causes this week, Kenya Wildlife Service said. She was believed to be between 60 and 65 years old.
“Dida was a truly an iconic matriarch of Tsavo and a great repository of many decades worth of knowledge,” Kenya Wildlife Service said. “She shepherded her herd through many seasons and challenging times.”
Dida was a tusker elephant, meaning she had tusks so large they scraped the ground. There are only about 25 or so tuskers left in the world, most of which reside in the Tsavo Conservation Area, according to the Tsavo Trust, which was founded in 2013 to help protect tuskers, which are extremely rare and at risk from poachers.
These large tusks are especially noteworthy on females, so Dida stood out as an iconic matriarch in the park.
Last year, the Trust lost track of Dida and thought she might have wandered to an “elephant graveyard.” While it said these are not the “dark, haunting” places depicted in “The Lion King,” older elephants will sometimes separate themselves from the herd when they are dying. “We are unsure exactly why this happens and it certainly isn’t a rule that all elephant follow as they approach their end, but it definitely does occur,” the Trust said.
Their hope for Dida was restored when a tourist snapped a photo of her last May. The elephant appeared to be in good health and was seen with others, even playing with a young elephant.
“She lived longer than many of us thought she would. To us, allowing an elephant to live its full life is something we are very proud of,” the Trust wrote in a statement about Dida’s death on Instagram.
The Trust said it didn’t have data more recent than 2016 about the state of elephants in Africa, but was “encouraged by the positive anti-poaching results” recently reported by neighboring Tanzania.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature attempts an African elephant report every 10 years. The most recent report in 2016 showed the were 415,000 elephants in Africa — decreasing by 93,000 since 2006, but this number could vary because some elephants are unaccounted for.
CBS News has reached out to Tsavo East National Park and the Tsavo Trust for more information on Dida and is awaiting response.
