FRESNO, Calif. — Shaunzi and Kara are the zoo’s biggest losers.
Together, the pachyderm pair has lost a ton - 2,175 pounds - after keepers at the Fresno Chaffee Zoo put them on a diet.
Shaunzi, the larger of the two, started the weight-loss program in January 2009 at 10,245 pounds and now weighs 9,135 pounds - down more than 10 percent. Kara’s results have been similar. Tipping the scales at 9,800 pounds in January 2009, she was 8,735 pounds in late May.
Zookeepers around the world are cutting calories and increasing exercise for animals who can suffer from too much food and too little room to roam. The Fresno zoo embarked on its elephant-slimming campaign after it found out how much “the girls” actually weighed.
“We knew they were heavy, but we didn’t know just how heavy,” said Harold Mountan, assistant animal curator.
After years of borrowing a truck scale periodically from the California Highway Patrol, Mountan said, the zoo bought a $5,000 elephant scale, using designated tax money collected from the regulated sale of marijuana.
Today, zookeepers keep tabs on Shaunzi and Kara with regular weigh-ins and make them work to find food.
Several times a day, Shaunzi and Kara are confined to the cave in their enclosures while keepers quickly bury fruits and vegetables under the sand and hang bags of hay and food pellets in barrels on towers.
To get their food, the elephants must stretch, dig, push or prod with their trunks or legs. They slam barrels with their trunks to release a few food pellets or reach for hay bags, and they must correctly position the barrels and bags to release the food. They use their trunks to sniff out food underneath the sand, occasionally cradling a piece of produce in curled trunks before making it disappear.
They also have a separate exercise regimen, Mountan said.
Although the diet and exercise program is relatively new to Fresno Chaffee, it’s standard in many other zoos - because in zoos today, thin is in. There was a time when keepers were excited to talk about their large animals, said Harry Peachey, curator of mainland Asia animals at the Columbus Zoo in Ohio.
“If you had an 800-pound gorilla in your collection you would brag about it,” he said. “Now, you would be embarrassed to say that in front of your peers.”
Studies have found that zoo gorillas had a higher incidence of heart disease, and zookeepers believe it’s caused by overly generous diets, Peachey said.
LITTLE ROCK ZOO
Mary and Ellen, the two elephants at the Little Rock Zoo, are neither too fat nor too thin for their advanced ages, general curator Mark Shaw and zoo director Mike Blakely agreed last week. But keepers weigh them monthly and take pains to keep them active.
Their enclosure and barn were expanded late last year. “They’ve got three larger outdoor yards now where they used to have two, and they used to have that one small building for the inside, so we’ve added to it,” Shaw said.
At least five days a week, keepers lead them on a two mile walk. “It’s not done with the public in the zoo,” he noted. In the afternoons they are made to exercise - hefting logs about.
Their weight varies, Shaw said. “In the fall and winter they do put on weight because of the [lower] temperatures, just like humans: We always put on that extra winter padding. Then in the summer they drop a little bit lower.”
Recently, Mary, the younger female at 59 3 /4years, weighed almost 10,000 pounds. “In the winter I think she was 10,000 pounds,” Shaw said.
Sixty-year-old Ellen’s weight ranges from the high 6,000s to the low 7,000s.
“Ellen is a lot smaller than Mary,” he noted. “She’s a little more petite - for an elephant.”
Their daily allotment of fruit, vegetables and herbivore cubes - compressed pellets of alfalfa and grains, in effect elephant chow - is measured and recorded, with the amount increased in the cold months and reduced in the heat.
PUBLIC PERCEPTION
“If you look at most animals in the wild, there is more body confirmation,” Shaw said. Depending on the animal, you might see the outlines of ribs. “An actual healthy animal, you will see some bones. Of course, you don’t want them all totally sucked in, emaciated. But you look at people’s dogs, you can tell which ones are at a good weight and which ones need some Healthy Choice.”
In Ohio, Peachey noted visitors often worry that a male lion at the Columbus Zoo is skinny, but in the wild, predators don’t get to eat every day.
The first elephant weight loss program began about nine years ago at San Diego Zoo and Wild Animal Park, where Jeff Andrews, associate curator for mammals, realized how much thinner elephants appeared in the wild. Zookeepers would pile food in front of the animals and offer them high-calorie snacks,such as fruit. And the animals got little or no exercise.
He reduced the amount they were fed and replaced higher calorie food with lower calorie choices. Elephants also were trained to exercise and allowed to wander their enclosures at night instead of being penned in individual stalls.
Five elephants lost between 1,500 and 2,000 pounds each, and a sixth male dropped 3,500 pounds - about 23 percent of his weight.
Weight issues have changed the way zoo elephants are cared for, said Bruce Upchurch, curator of elephants at Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle.
“Going back 30 years, it was ‘Let’s feed them as much as - and the best quality food - we possibly can,’” he said. “It was acceptable to throw hay in front of them and let them eat. That’s just not acceptable anymore.”
Fresno Chaffee Zoo also has changed its food, going to low-starch and high-fiber food pellets and replacing apples with lower-calorie carrots.
Kara, 33, and Shaunzi, 39, are roughly equivalent to humans in their 50s, Fresno zoo director Scott Barton said. Elephants will live into their 50s or older in zoos, and live to similar ages in the wild.
Although Shaunzi and Kara have pared off the pounds, their work is not done, Mountan said. The goal is for them each to weigh no more than 8,500 pounds. He wants to be able to see their backbones from behind.
Celia Storey added information to this report.
ActiveStyle, Pages 25 on 06/21/2010