Women Begin to Ride Herd as Trainers

M. Lucille Sweeney has been working with elephants for more than a decade now, and she has an answer for male colleagues who think women are in over their heads when they try to handle the giant animals.

“I simply remind them that most of the mahouts over in Burma and Thailand are even littler than I am and they don’t have to use brute force to manage their animals,” Sweeney said. “I don’t think I do, either.”

Sweeney is among a rapidly growing number of women who have begun to handle and train elephants at American zoos. The emergence of women as a significant force in what has been a male--and sometimes macho--occupation was evident last week as elephant keepers from around the country met for their ninth annual convention. Dozens of young women, many in their 20s, were among the 180 keepers who gathered to hear the latest scientific research and argue about the current controversy concerning elephant discipline and abuse.

Only a Handful in 1980

When the keepers organized their first meeting in 1980, only a handful of women attended.

“More and more zoos are beginning to get more female keepers in,” said Sweeney, who has been working at the Houston Zoo for 18 years. “It’s just beginning to open up. . . . These kids are getting into it, and a lot of them are doing very well.”

Sweeney and some others at the convention say the emergence of women in the field has significance beyond equal rights considerations and could eventually bring about a change in philosophies of elephant management. Old methods that rely on force and sometimes beatings may give way to the use of positive reinforcement and patience, Sweeney said. “I call it ‘breaking’ versus ‘training,’ ” she said.

“I never have had to use brute force,” Sweeney said. “They train quite well using operant conditioning and using gradual methods.”

While a number of young women are being taught traditional methods of elephant handling, she said, many are looking to new methods.

“We’ve got to learn that we have some valuable things to offer,” she said. “A lot of women are a little shy about it. They don’t know that they very, very definitely are going to have a voice in this thing as it moves along.”

“It’s a trend,” said Dale Tuttle, director of the Jacksonville Zoo and host of the conference. “I hear it all the time--how many women show up--and every year it gets to be more and more.”

Tuttle is on a committee of nine representatives of the American Assn. of Zoological Parks and Aquariums who met at the convention to interview handlers about the state of elephant management in North America. The committee was formed in response to allegations that an elephant at the San Diego Wild Animal Park was abused in a beating administered by keepers there. During the four-day convention, the association, a voluntary organization that accredits zoos, interviewed 19 keepers representing a cross-section of those who attended, Tuttle said.

“I think something we saw through our interviews is that strength is not necessarily the key to managing elephants, and some of the old-timers told us that,” Tuttle said. The interviews also showed that in zoos as a whole, there is a significant increase in the number of women in all keeper positions, he said.

The San Diego Wild Animal Park sent a woman, Jean Hromadka, as its representative to the conference. The San Diego Zoo did not send a staff member, but senior elephant trainer Lisa Landres attended the conference on her own.

In Tuttle’s view, the shift may be a victory for the animals as well as the women who get the jobs. For women, he said, “to take care of and protect something is a natural instinct.”

After 22 years working at zoos, Tuttle said, he has reached the conclusion that “women make far better keepers when it comes to animals that are upset or distressed. Women have a more quieting effect.”

Tuttle said he is not sure whether that theory extends to elephant keepers, and added that little research has been done on the subject.

Considered a Threat

“Often times in the animal kingdom, a male and female will come together and breed and the male goes on,” Tuttle said. “If the male comes back around, he’s a threat. He may eat that female’s baby; therefore, he’s a threat.

“Sometimes I’m accused of going a little off the wall, but I sometimes think that carries over to almost all species.”

Tuttle said he has observed numerous situations over the years in which his wife, an animal handler, worked easily with certain animals. “I came around and I was a threat to them, but they accepted her right down the line.”

Sweeney said she has always had a “rapport” with animals and sees some natural advantages women may have. “I think they have a lot more nurturing ability than many men do, but not necessarily than all men do,” she said.

She cited a case involving a male curator at the Houston Zoo who “very, very definitely had a lot of respect for the animals.” In fact, she said, “he had so much respect he couldn’t stand seeing animals in zoos, period, so he left. He felt animals belonged in the wild.”

Such empathy for animals is derided by some elephant handlers who call the attitude “Bambiology.” Some women at the conference complained that their opinions and research sometimes are not given sufficient weight because some men suspect Bambiology has colored their observations. After a woman keeper delivered a paper here Thursday describing the reactions of an elephant herd to the death of one of its members, one woman in the audience remarked, “It’s too bad that wasn’t given by a man.”

The division among keepers about how to handle elephants is not necessarily a male-female issue. “It’s more difficult for women to be heard, to be listened to,” said Tina Zerr, 32, a keeper at the Lee Richardson Zoo in Garden City, Kan.

“It’s more difficult for her opinions to be recognized as having any importance, because it’s been such a male-dominated field for so long. If there’s been a strong female trainer or show person it’s been because she’s been somebody’s wife. . . . We’re breaking new ground.”

Zerr, too, thinks women approach elephant handling differently than men.

“Probably women are a little bit more open to instincts,” she said. “I don’t think that women are going to turn out to be softer on elephants. I think that we are just going to not be so fast to jump to physical force.”

Sometimes women lose respect in the field, Zerr said, because “some women feel like the soft touch works. I don’t think it does. I think they can hurt women breaking into the profession just as much as a man who uses too much force.”

Zerr said she and other women don’t want to be perceived as “the marshmallow type.” She added, “There are some women who can affect men’s attitudes if you come on too cutesy, too soft, too marshmallowy, as in, ‘Oh, I love my little baby elephant.’ ”

Zerr said she once was among those who thought that elephant handlers had to be big people.

“Then I saw a little tiny woman, 5-foot-1, and maybe she broke a hundred pounds, work these huge elephants. That really changed my mind about diminutive size. She worked the elephants just like the head keeper did.”