RESEARCH ARTICLE
Evaluation of Demographics and Social Life Events of Asian (Elephas maximus) and African Elephants (Loxodonta africana) in North American Zoos Natalia A. Prado-Oviedo1,2*, Mary K. Bonaparte-Saller3, Elizabeth J. Malloy4, Cheryl L. Meehan5, Joy A. Mench3, Kathy Carlstead6, Janine L. Brown1
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OPEN ACCESS Citation: Prado-Oviedo NA, Bonaparte-Saller MK, Malloy EJ, Meehan CL, Mench JA, Carlstead K, et al. (2016) Evaluation of Demographics and Social Life Events of Asian (Elephas maximus) and African Elephants (Loxodonta africana) in North American Zoos. PLoS ONE 11(7): e0154750. doi:10.1371/ journal.pone.0154750 Editor: Sadie Jane Ryan, University of Florida, UNITED STATES Received: May 20, 2015 Accepted: April 16, 2016 Published: July 14, 2016 Copyright: This is an open access article, free of all copyright, and may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, modified, built upon, or otherwise used by anyone for any lawful purpose. The work is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication. Data Availability Statement: For reasons relating to protection of the facilities and animals included in this study, access restrictions apply to the individual-level data underlying the findings. A data set of deidentified, population-level data is available at doi: 10. 6084/m9.figshare.3383554. Funding: Funding for this project was received from The Institution of Museum and Library Services; grant number LG-25-10-0033-10. Employers provided financial support in the form of authors' salaries as follows: Smithsonian National Zoological Park (JLB,
1 Center for Species Survival, Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute, Smithsonian National Zoological Park, Front Royal, Virginia, United States of America, 2 Department of Environmental Science and Policy, George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia, United States of America, 3 Department of Animal Science and Center for Animal Welfare, University of California Davis, Davis, California, United States of America, 4 Department of Mathematics and Statistics, American University, 4400 Massachusetts Ave. NW, Washington, District of Columbia, United States of America, 5 AWARE Institute, Portland, Oregon, United States of America, 6 Independent Researcher, Portland, Oregon, United States of America * [email protected]
Abstract This study quantified social life events hypothesized to affect the welfare of zoo African and Asian elephants, focusing on animals that were part of a large multi-disciplinary, multi-institutional elephant welfare study in North America. Age was calculated based on recorded birth dates and an age-based account of life event data for each elephant was compiled. These event histories included facility transfers, births and deaths of offspring, and births and deaths of non-offspring herd mates. Each event was evaluated as a total number of events per elephant, lifetime rate of event exposure, and age at first event exposure. These were then compared across three categories: species (African vs. Asian); sex (male vs. female); and origin (imported vs. captive-born). Mean age distributions differed (p
Evaluation of Demographics and Social Life Events of Asian (Elephas maximus) and African Elephants (Loxodonta africana) in North American Zoos Natalia A. Prado-Oviedo1,2*, Mary K. Bonaparte-Saller3, Elizabeth J. Malloy4, Cheryl L. Meehan5, Joy A. Mench3, Kathy Carlstead6, Janine L. Brown1
a11111
OPEN ACCESS Citation: Prado-Oviedo NA, Bonaparte-Saller MK, Malloy EJ, Meehan CL, Mench JA, Carlstead K, et al. (2016) Evaluation of Demographics and Social Life Events of Asian (Elephas maximus) and African Elephants (Loxodonta africana) in North American Zoos. PLoS ONE 11(7): e0154750. doi:10.1371/ journal.pone.0154750 Editor: Sadie Jane Ryan, University of Florida, UNITED STATES Received: May 20, 2015 Accepted: April 16, 2016 Published: July 14, 2016 Copyright: This is an open access article, free of all copyright, and may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, modified, built upon, or otherwise used by anyone for any lawful purpose. The work is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication. Data Availability Statement: For reasons relating to protection of the facilities and animals included in this study, access restrictions apply to the individual-level data underlying the findings. A data set of deidentified, population-level data is available at doi: 10. 6084/m9.figshare.3383554. Funding: Funding for this project was received from The Institution of Museum and Library Services; grant number LG-25-10-0033-10. Employers provided financial support in the form of authors' salaries as follows: Smithsonian National Zoological Park (JLB,
1 Center for Species Survival, Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute, Smithsonian National Zoological Park, Front Royal, Virginia, United States of America, 2 Department of Environmental Science and Policy, George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia, United States of America, 3 Department of Animal Science and Center for Animal Welfare, University of California Davis, Davis, California, United States of America, 4 Department of Mathematics and Statistics, American University, 4400 Massachusetts Ave. NW, Washington, District of Columbia, United States of America, 5 AWARE Institute, Portland, Oregon, United States of America, 6 Independent Researcher, Portland, Oregon, United States of America * [email protected]
Abstract This study quantified social life events hypothesized to affect the welfare of zoo African and Asian elephants, focusing on animals that were part of a large multi-disciplinary, multi-institutional elephant welfare study in North America. Age was calculated based on recorded birth dates and an age-based account of life event data for each elephant was compiled. These event histories included facility transfers, births and deaths of offspring, and births and deaths of non-offspring herd mates. Each event was evaluated as a total number of events per elephant, lifetime rate of event exposure, and age at first event exposure. These were then compared across three categories: species (African vs. Asian); sex (male vs. female); and origin (imported vs. captive-born). Mean age distributions differed (p
