Free Laxmi, the elephant

The killing of a man by an elephant at Byculla zoo last Sunday draws attention to the unbearable stress felt by large animals kept in close confinement. It also begs the question what influence it has on children when they see animals kept in cruel conditions.

To see the 55-year-old elephant, Laxmi, chained inside her enclosure on a lazy weekday afternoon shouldn’t surprise you. We’ve unfortunately come to accept such practices at our zoos.  
But even the most indifferent visitor would be concerned if he knew what PAWS volunteer Sunish Subramanium observed on his daily trips to the zoo after Laxmi killed a man last Sunday. He visited the zoo at different hours in the day and didn’t see Laxmi free from the chains. Deputy municipal commissioner Chandrasekhar Rokade believes that she should be freed gradually from her chains. “But that sounds like they are punishing her for killing the man who was not supposed to have been in her unmanned enclosure,” says Subramanium.

More than the perceived injustice of it, however, the incident draws attention to the unbearable stress on large animals like Laxmi kept in close confinement in zoos like the one at Byculla. It also begs the question what sort of amusement or ‘education’ it is for children to see animals kept in such cruel conditions.

Throughout the 30 minutes we spent observing Laxmi, she couldn’t stop head-nodding — a stereotypy also found in humans with mental retardation. Experts say 40 per cent of captive elephants exhibit this behaviour due to boredom and stress.
Nilesh Bhanage, founder of Plants and Animals Welfare Society (PAWS), Thane, is surprised that people still haven’t joined the dots. “Is the city shocked that a social animal like an elephant killed a man? Just look around our zoos at the way these animals are displayed for our amusement.”

According to a report by PAWS that studied elephants in the Mumbai, Pune and  Aurangabad zoos, Laxmi was born in captivity in a circus, before she was brought to the Byculla zoo 16 years ago. One can imagine the trauma she must have undergone in being forced to learn tricks and perform. Add to that the lack of access to sufficient water, mud and walking space in the zoo, and you can understand why so many zoo elephants die prematurely, says Bhanage, who authored the research paper.

But are these also reasons enough to drive a zoo animal, with no history of violence, to wrap its trunk around a man and bash his head against a wall?

The answer is yes, according to conservationists who have closely worked with animals. “Over time, the frustration of being in such close confinement gives rise to aberrant behaviour in elephants whose understanding, memory and emotional responses are close to those of humans,” says Suparna Ganguly, trustee of Asian Nature Conservation Foundation.

No easy solutions
The solution, according to the Central Zoo Authority (CZA), lies in shifting the elephants from zoos and circuses to national parks and tiger reserves so that they get space to move around. “There’s no deadline the zoos have to abide by, but rescue camps to relocate the elephants will have to be set up,” says BS Bonal, member-secretary of CZA.

But several prerequisites have to fall into place before this reasonable-sounding measure can be implemented.

To begin with, veterinarian Deepa Katyal explains the difficulty involved: “Picture this: you capture an animal like Laxmi to keep her with humans. Ideally, you must massage her regularly, not change her mahout, and give her the space and infrastructure she needs to be fit to live amongst us humans. But the ground reality is that we exhibit them and poke them around as if responding to us and entertaining our children is their duty. We render the animal unfit to live amidst humans, and ultimately unprepared to go back to the wild.”

In India, forest camps for elephants are plenty, including those in Assam, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, West Bengal and Orissa.
But NVK Ashraf, director of the Wildlife Trust of India, explains why Laxmi would find it hard to survive in such a camp. “Introducing a captive elephant in a forest camp means demanding that she adapts from a solitary life to semi-wild conditions. The elephant will have to interact with a well-established social order, with territorial males, children and so on. Many captive elephants are obese and have never worked like they would have to in a forest camp and we cannot boast of qualified trainers in India either.”
So, even though Kerala has started an experimental rescue camp for elephants, and more are expected to come up soon in Karnataka and Haryana, it remains to be seen if they will have the right kind of staff trained in animal behaviour, because that is what Laxmi will need to make the transition from captivity to relative freedom.

Meanwhile, at the Byculla zoo, between the vigorous head-nodding, Laxmi notices an unsuccessful attempt by a child to climb the railing leading to her walking area. Chained in the enclosure at least saves her from being teased by curious visitors who have come to see “the elephant who murdered a poor man.”
Not far from Laxmi’s cage, the hyena isn’t so lucky, as a family tries their best to wake him up by their whistling and squealing. A child whispers, “He just doesn’t budge. I think he will die.” Well, thank God for that.