Can Elephants Breed in Captivity?
Elephants have very complex needs, making breeding them in captivity more challenging than other species. Breeding elephants in captivity usually takes human intervention and can cause a great deal of stress on the elephant(s) involved. However, if elephants can breed and give birth to calves in captivity, why is there so much controversy about the topic online?
When searching “can elephants breed in captivity,” you’re likely to see contradicting answers from the top few online results. This all comes down to who is publishing the information and their ideology about captive breeding. Today, the top Google result for that search term states that it is easy to breed elephants in captivity and that breeding success has been on the rise in recent years. The second result says that many captive elephants have poor fertility and cannot conceive.
When considering the sources of these results, I’m sure you can guess which one of those answers came from a zoo and which from an animal rights organization. This is because organizations differ in their perspective on the ethics behind captive breeding. So let’s break down the facts behind the captive breeding of elephants.
How do Elephants Breed in Captivity?
There are three ways in which elephants can be bred in captive environments. These methods differ by region, facility type, and available resources. However, arguably the most significant distinction between these three methods is the ethics behind the practice. The three ways elephants can be bred in captivity are through artificial insemination, forced breeding, or housing breeding pairs together and hoping they naturally reproduce.
Artificial Insemination of Elephants
Artificial insemination is most commonly used in zoos with breeding programs. Zoos believe it is their responsibility to maintain a healthy captive population of the species they house, and to support that goal, they actively disperse the genetic materials of male elephants to inseminate female elephants around the country.
To inseminate a female, she is usually trained to stand still so that she does not need to be heavily sedated or medicated for the procedure. Often the elephant is tied by all four feet to avoid any movement that could compromise the procedure or safety of staff.
Ethical Implications: risk of causing trauma from unwanted and forced pregnancy and other psychological risks that can lead to abnormal maternal behaviors like infanticide* or disinterest in the eventual calf. Rejection of a calf could lead to the calf dying young from not receiving the necessary nutrients and care.
*Infanticide is a phenomenon where the female elephant kills her calf. This is thought to be the response of captive females in suboptimal confined environments and could be rooted in the mother not wanting her baby to live in these conditions. This conclusion has been drawn due to the fact that infanticide is not observed in wild elephant populations.
Forced Breeding Practices
Forced breeding is generally practiced in Asian countries and differs from artificial insemination in that the male elephant is brought to the female and forced to breed with her. This is often done by restraining the female so she cannot escape his attempts. Due to the obvious ethical dilemmas around forced breeding, this method is never used in sanctuaries/facilities that put welfare first.
Ethical Implications: risk of trauma because of the female's lack of autonomy over her body during breeding. In addition to the psychological impacts this leaves on the female, it can be very dangerous. Bulls uninterested in breeding will sometimes attack the female, which can kill them or cause severe injuries resulting in life-long disability.
Natural Breeding in Elephants
In some sanctuaries and free-range projects where the elephants are given more opportunities to socialize and regain autonomy, they will breed naturally. This is less common in captive environments in Asia, as most facilities that encourage autonomy in their herds also discourage captive breeding. To avoid breeding, some facilities prefer to keep their bulls separate from females or will chemically castrate males.
Often, these facilities discourage breeding because we do not need more elephants in captivity; we need more elephants in the wild and more elephants being rescued from exploitation. If captive facilities were to continue breeding elephants, we would continue to have captive-born elephants that are not well-adjusted and not contributing to the wild populations.
Success Rate of Captive Breeding with Elephants
The success rate of captive breeding with elephants differs by facility type. In many facilities, elephants have a reduced lifespan and never even have a chance to have one calf. Researchers have found that the average lifespan for an elephant in the United States in captivity is around 27 years old. This would give an elephant the chance to potentially have one calf, whereas, in the wild, elephants have several calves in their lifetime and live an average of 60-70 years.
Captive elephants generally are not as healthy as elephants living in their range countries, and captive individuals have high rates of developing reproductive issues such as ovarian cysts. In addition, with diets inconsistent with their natural wild diet, many elephants in captivity are either over or underweight which can affect fertility and the ability to carry a pregnancy to term. According to research published by the Born Free Foundation, 40% of zoo infant elephants die before they reach the age of five.
Additional data provided by Born Free Foundation found that, in North America, since 1995, 17 African elephants have been born and 38 Asian elephants born. Of these calves born, only six African elephants survive, and 24 Asian elephants. This shows that while yes, elephants can be bred and their rate of obtaining viable pregnancies may be increasing, as suggested above in the Google result mentioned, the survival rate is not overly impressive.
Is it Ethical to Breed Elephants in Captivity?
Many conservationists and animal welfare advocates maintain that captive breeding is unethical and irresponsible. Alternatively, zoos and other captive environments that profit off of having elephants that tourists can interact with and see keep that it is our responsibility to breed these endangered animals.
While both sides will never see eye to eye, and you may agree with one side more than another, here is my take on why captive breeding is unethical and should not be practiced in any facility that is not actively releasing elephants back into the wild:
Captive-born elephants do not contribute to wild population conservation because captive-born elephants are rarely, if ever, released into the wild. This is true across zoos and many captive facilities in Asia. Knowing that the calves born cannot contribute to the wild numbers and, therefore, will never be considered when determining if the animal is classified as endangered or not, do they genuinely have conservation value? If elephants went extinct in the wild, but the United States still had a population living in zoos, how does this help save the natural ecosystems in Asia and Africa that would collapse without the presence of the species? Breeding elephants to live in suboptimal conditions in non-range countries primarily benefits the businesses that profit from having these animals, to the detriment of the animals themselves.
Elephants are sentient beings with similar brain structures to humans and, because of this, are at high risk of the same psychological disorders we humans suffer from. It is incredibly unethical to force them to become pregnant, whether through invasive insemination practices or being mounted by a bull against their will, knowing the psychological distress it causes.
To return to the original question— yes, elephants can breed in captivity; however, when considering the ethical implications of this breeding, it’s important to remember that elephants are incredibly intelligent and sentient beings that can suffer from trauma just as we can. While the psychological impacts may be justifiable if they were to support a dying wild population, captive efforts to breed elephants are primarily to keep elephants in captivity.
