Animal Diaries Archive

Training New Behaviours

22 November 2007

Hello and welcome to the next edition of Elephant Diaries. This entry will have us talking about some of the new behaviours that we are now incorporating into our daily demonstration. For just over a month now we have been training our elephants to pick up and carry logs around the exhibit. The reason why we have trained this particular behaviour is to highlight a bit about the history of Asian Elephants. You see elephants have been used for 1000's of years to help log forests, which is how they got the nickname ‘Beasts of Burden'. Unfortunately even today in some countries they are still used to help log their ever declining habitat.

Elephants are highly intelligent animals and require a lot of stimulation through out the day, so training them to do new activities can be really good for keeping their brains active. We have also been training them to open their mouths nice and wide, so we can check their teeth. Elephants have four large molars in their mouth and each tooth is about the size of a house brick "WOW". All the visitors at the zoo have loved the new demonstration's they are always blown away when they see the size of their teeth. You can catch our elephant demonstration at 12.40pm everyday which consists of a wash down, ball games, pool sessions, log carrying, foot maintenance and of course showing off their teeth. It is also very informative and ends with the elephants eating some large browse and the opportunity to have some one on one question time with the handlers.

"I know all this sounds awesome, your right it is, so get on down here and check it out."

All the best from the Elephant TeamHope to see you all soon.