The Water’s Fine : Asian Elephants Warm Up to Pool at San Diego Park

Connie was the first to test the waters, delicately dipping the tip of her trunk into the murky water, much as a person might put in a toe to check the temperature.

She trumpeted loudly. Then, finally, Connie took the plunge.

She was the bravest of the San Diego Wild Animal Park’s seven female Asian elephants, edging up cautiously to their plush new pool shortly after being released into the compound Monday. The pool is designed to provide a more aesthetic and natural environment, as well as to get the pachyderms exercising more.

“Nita we would have expected to go in right away because she’s the dominant elephant, and she’s usually the one who goes trying something out before others will,” said Tom Hanscom, spokesman for the park.

Eventually, Nita and the others took turns getting wet, only to fling dirt on themselves with their trunks once they got out.

“Elephants, when they get wet, they get itchy,” elephant program manager Alan Roocroft said.

A boulder placed in a clearing in the compound is at a height just right for them to scratch their undersides after a swim, he said.

The $100,000 Asian elephant pool, which opened to the public Tuesday, has been five months in the making and is the first step toward bringing patrons within arm’s length of the floppy-eared beasts at the park near Escondido.

It replaces an older, smaller pool and is similar in size to one built for the African elephants in a neighboring compound.

The park plans to eventually build a deck reaching to the edge of the wading pool and to plant grass in parts of the compound.

The pool and the compound, which includes boulders and ficus and bamboo trees, was designed for the convenience and health of the elephants, park employees said.

A collage of boulders, some of them weighing six tons, were placed in a pattern that makes it impossible for them to be dislodged.

“It’s kind of like a jigsaw puzzle,” Roocroft said. “We want them to be able to get to them and use them as scratching posts, but obviously we don’t want them to be moving them. Given the right terrain, though, they could move those rocks quite easily.”

The elephants succeeded in rocking one of the boulders forward, but could not pull it out. The pool gives the elephants a chance to swim, something they couldn’t do in their old pool.

“Elephants don’t move normally in captivity, and you’ve got to find ways to get them to exercise,” Roocroft said.

The pool, which is nine feet deep and has two entrances, is deep enough to put the 8-foot-tall elephants through a healthy workout and is designed to accommodate their social structure.

“If we were to build a pool with just one entrance, you may have a dominant animal at the entrance keeping a sub-dominant one in or out of the pool,” Roocroft said.