Taming Tamers : Zoo Uses the Carrot to Replace the Stick After Elephant Keeper’s Death

A year after one of its elephant keepers was killed, the San Diego Wild Animal Park is trumpeting a radically new method of handling elephants by training them to respond voluntarily to commands from keepers on the other side of a steel fence.

The new system, based on Sea World’s training method for whales that relies exclusively on a positive-reward system, augurs a new era in the 4,500-year-old relationship between man and the largest of land mammals.

Literally, the carrot is replacing the stick.

But while the technique all but guarantees the safety of elephant keepers, the keepers vehemently argue that it takes the heart out of their job and jeopardizes the elephants’ welfare.

“Protected custody would be much easier for us, less stressful, Easy Street,” said elephant keeper Bethany Smith. “But because we care about the elephants, we’re willing to take the risks.”

Keepers say that only through unrestricted contact can they best nurture their elephants and, when necessary, serve as the herd’s most dominant member and referee. That approach relies upon the use of the ankus, a wooden bat used for thousands of years to mete out pachyderm punishment.

The issue pits traditional animal keepers at the world-renowned Wild Animal Park against the park management’s new philosophy and focuses on one of the hottest issues before the zoo industry. Despite their reputation as gentle giants, elephants can turn rebellious without provocation, whacking trainers with their trunks, butting them with their heads or trampling them, leading to serious injuries or death, elephant managers said. Other elephant keepers have been killed after unwittingly getting caught between two tussling elephants, which is what led to the death of Wild Animal Park elephant keeper Pam Orsi a year ago.

Fifteen elephant handlers in the United States have been killed on the job over the last 15 years, said John Lehnardt of the National Zoological Park in Washington.

Many zoos in the nation have introduced “protected contact” elephant management, in which feistier animals are brought into small constraint devices, nicknamed “elephant squeezes,” as part of their daily regimen.

Once contained, the animal is tended by keepers on the other side of steel bars, while generously rewarded with a steady stream of carrots and apples.

The Wild Animal Park is modifying its elephant barns and yards to incorporate the protected contact scheme at a cost of more than $1 million.

Trainers at the park also have begun teaching their elephants to voluntarily approach a customized gate where they can be groomed, medicated or otherwise tended by keepers on the other side of the steel barrier. If an elephant is obedient and cooperates, it is rewarded with food; if it refuses or misbehaves, it is not punished.

After nine months of training, the 10,000-pound African bull elephant Chico--who, of the park’s 16 elephants, is the one deemed too dangerous to be allowed any direct human contact unless tranquilized--is testimony to the program.

Given verbal commands and signals with foam-tipped sticks called targets--the equivalent of the hand signs given to performing killer whales at marine parks--Chico will put one of his front feet through a portal for grooming, press his face against a higher opening for eye medication, or flap his ear through the opening so blood can be drawn. As one keeper tends to Chico, another tosses him apples and carrots.

If the park’s work with Chico is extended to other elephants, animal behaviorists will have revolutionized a 4,500-year-old training tradition that relied on the ankus to make 8,000-pound animals obey human beings.

“I personally like the human-animal contact,” said Dale Tuttle, who heads the species survival program for elephants on behalf of the American Assn. of Zoological Parks and Aquariums. “When you see a man or woman with the talent to manage an elephant, working together, it’s a fine pairing that brings a lump to my throat.”

Traditionalists say the need for keepers to work side by side with their charges in the open field transcends just romantic, aesthetic notions of man and animal working in unison.

They contend that they need to get into the yards for work with elephants that are too sick or injured to get to the gate. They say they also can detect and treat skin, foot and other medical problems or injuries more quickly in the open field.

Moreover, the traditionalists say, a newborn calf can be protected from its startled mother if keepers are there to separate the two. Open contact also puts them in the best position to temper elephant dynamics that can be upset by a newcomer or an upstart elephant.

Park managers respond that in the most extreme scenario, in which a sick or injured elephant in the enclosure cannot or will not make its way to the protected-contact gate, keepers can lure the other animals back to the barn and tend the ailing elephant.

If a birthing cow reacts badly to its new calf, the park would rather lose the calf than risk the keeper’s life by intervening, said Randy G. Rieches, curator of mammals at the San Diego Wild Animal Park.

“They (traditionalists) feel like they’re relinquishing control. We see it as eliminating risk,” Rieches said.

Both the Los Angeles and San Diego zoos permit their keepers to have free contact with most of their elephants but are keeping an eye on the Wild Animal Park’s program.

Alan Roocroft, director of the Wild Animal Park’s elephant program, said he worries about how herd dynamics will play out with no keepers in the enclosure to temper the beasts’ behavior.

But he said he is interested in pursuing this new line of elephant management “if it betters the lot of elephants in captivity. The industry needs to look at different options.”