In some zoos you can still see older elephants swaying back and forth or performing the same movements over and over again in the smallest radius, although there is enough space to run around. These are mostly animals that used to be chained somewhere for a long time and have become accustomed to hospitalistic behavior. Opinion can be divided as to whether elephants should be kept in captivity at all, after all, in the wild they migrate up to ten kilometers a day on average. But few would dispute that conditions in zoos – at least in the western hemisphere – have improved tremendously since the dark days of permanent bondage: high-hanging feeders, mud wallows and pools, a shelter, retreats and trees for scrubbing, toys are all part of it – and above all: other elephants.
But that is not enough for some zoos. The animal park in Houston in the US state of Texas, for example, offers its twelve elephants yoga lessons at. With a series of static and dynamic stretching exercises, the zoo keepers say they stimulate the animals’ “brain and body”. At four months old, the baby elephants begin their yoga training by playing with a tennis ball attached to a broomstick. Later, the zoo keepers encourage the elephants to move the part of their body that they touch with this stick, for example by stretching the leg to the side or lifting it. Then there’s a banana, a piece of wholemeal bread or a sweet potato as a reward.
Maybe yoga classes for humans should start introducing similar reward routines—a bite from the protein bar or something for each exercise completed. And I’m sure some of the zoo exercises could somehow be adopted. There is already a “Downward Dog” – so why not an “Upward Elephant”?
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