The international organization In Defense of Animals named the Los Angeles Zoo & Botanical Gardens the worst zoo in North America for elephants in 2023 due to its treatment of Billy – a 38-year-old Asian bull elephant.
In a list that includes the Houston Zoo, Denver Zoo, Oklahoma City Zoo and Oregon Zoo, the LA Zoo took the top spot owing to what the organization describes as years of zoo-related stress, loneliness and depression causing Billy’s mental and physical health to decline. This is the eighth year the LA Zoo has made the organization’s annual list.
Courtney Scott, elephant consultant for In Defense of Animals, said Billy exhibits some of the worst zoochotic behavior they’ve seen of any elephant in zoos. Zoochosis is a form of psychosis commonly observed in captive animals. It manifests as stereotypic activities that are monotonous actions with seemingly no goal or definitive objective. These actions can include head rolling, extreme licking, hair or feather pulling, striding and outline swimming.
Zoochosis appears more frequently in higher-intelligence animals, including monkeys, bears and orcas, but especially elephants.
“That is an indication that he [Billy] is under enormous stress, and he’s suffering mentally and physically,” Scott said. “He has the most need to get out of there before his body and his mind degenerate any further.”
Scott brought up the two most recent deaths of Asian elephants in the care of the LA Zoo, 61-year-old Jewel in January 2023 and 53-year-old Shaunzi on Jan. 3, and said that unless Billy is taken to a sanctuary and begins to heal, he will likely share the same fate. Only one other elephant remains at the zoo, 57-year-old Tina.
Additionally, Scott pointed out that Billy is isolated most of the time because of musth – a naturally occurring, periodic condition in male elephants that typically lasts around two to three months characterized by heightened aggressive behavior and accompanied by a large rise in reproductive hormones. However, being isolated means that Billy has had no way to release all that energy and aggression. He’s also been subject to numerous procedures to extract sperm for breeding elephants in other zoos, but those attempts failed.
“They’re living with that frustration often for many months,” Scott said. “Billy was in musth eight months last year, which is way longer than they would in the wild and it’s because he’s living in such deprived conditions.”
Being in musth for that long meant zoo staff were not able to properly keep up with Billy’s footcare. His daily pacing in his “puny-sized” exhibit over ground covered in urine and feces has created deep infections that could lead to fatal foot disease.
“The thing with elephants is that their bodies and their minds [have been] programmed for thousands of years to walk for miles,” she continued. “It’s literally what keeps them alive because if they don’t move, they start degenerating. There’s a lot of weight to put on their feet. They have to move to keep their muscles staying healthy and for their minds because they are intelligent. They need stimulation.”
Scott said the LA Zoo has been resistant to move Billy to a sanctuary, despite the efforts of animal rights activists, attorneys and celebrities – including Cher, Lily Tomlin and Bob Barker. Even politicians have gotten involved. Former LA City Councilmember Paul Koretz introduced a motion to send Billy to a sanctuary, which was seconded by Councilmember Bob Blumenfield.
However, zoo leadership has downplayed the severity of Billy’s zoochosis. In a 2012 lawsuit against the zoo, in which numerous staff were deposed, then LA Zoo Director John Lewis said that Billy’s continuous head bobbing was a sign that he was anticipating food.
“Every wild elephant expert contradicted that and explained that it is not true, that it’s a condition called … zoochotic behavior,” Scott said.
Currently, In Defense of Animals is focusing on closing elephant exhibits. Scott said that zoos are not a good place to keep any large exotic animal, adding that the ultimate goal is to see zoos transition to digital displays or even holograms.
The long-term goal of the organization is the closure of zoos or to have them transition to different models. Scott described one possible model – proposed by Michael Schmidt, who was a veterinarian at the Oregon Zoo – where zoos would collaborate to create large, sanctuary-like places that people could go to, but the animals would have the maximum amount of space and freedom that could be provided.
“There are all these innovative ideas out there … so these things can be changed,” Scott said. “I have been to zoos and seen animatronics [for a] huge moving dinosaur and kids were all over that thing. They loved it. So there are ways to still have a zoo but adopt different policies and different models that aren’t inhumane.”
The San Fernando Valley Sun/el Sol reached out to the LA Zoo, but they declined to comment.
The organization is holding a rally outside the LA Zoo Jan. 28 at 11 a.m. to advocate for Billy’s release into a sanctuary.
For more information on In Defense of Animals, go to https://www.idausa.org/.
City Zoo by VY Laramore
The tick of time is out of rhyme,
Where wild things wait for death.
Watching the stars through iron bars,
And breathing each other’s breath.
But little man with his civic plan,
To conquer and subdue,
Acquires a thrill from broken will,
Of beasts in the city zoo.
Keeping elephants in zoos for people to gawk at, is no more appropriate today than putting people on display (“elephant man”, “bearded lady”, Siamese twins, etc etc etc.) TIMES HAVE CHANGED, and we now have so much more scientific knowledge about animal behavior and the natural history of wildlife – just watch PBS!
We know better, YOU need to do better. Because captivity isn’t conservation. It’s animals in cages. It’s selfish, and it’s cruel.
Thank you Julia for your insightful comments, we do know better now, and we can do better. Let’s hope this is the year LA does better for this one lonely, sad elephant.
I so agree!
I so agree with Julia N Allen PhD DVM. Elephants DO NOT belong in zoos!!! Elephants are highly intelligent and maintain close family bonds. Zoos are essentially prisons that destroy family bonds. Would you do this to family members of the human race? Sad and sickening to see sentient beings subjected to this torture!
Agreed! Humans have no business torturing elephants or any animal for entertainment and/or profits.
Well said!
The fact that Billy’s keepers think that Billy is bopping his head up and down because he’s anticipating food, shows just how uneducated they are about elephants. Poor Billy must be in so much pain with his feet getting infected and in extreme emotional distress being in musth for so long. He is a prisoner in the LA Zoo and it is appalling that the LA Zoo puts profits ahead of his welfare. He will die young there but could lead a happy, healthy life in a sanctuary if the zoo industry could finally admit that keeping elephants in zoos is no longer acceptable.
You are so right! The LA Zoo does what most zoos do, they tell stories to visitors to try to mask how much elephants suffer in their cruel captivity.
Elephants do not belong in zoos. They are highly social beings, and are super intelligent. An elephant named Happy at the Bronx Zoo recognized herself in the mirror test. Elephants know when they are ready to breed — but zoos are always doing fertility tests on females and perform artificial insemination experiments on them, sometimes shipping them around the country for this purpose. It is referred to as the Species Survival Program – I call it the Zoo Survival Program. Zoos claim they do conservation, but the amount they spend on conservation is a drop in the bucket compared to the absurd millions they spend to keep animals in captivity. Tina and Billy deserve to be retired to a sanctuary to live out their lives in peace.
It is beyond cruel to cage an elephant. They are a wild animal who retain all their wild instincts. Nothing even remotely natural exists in a cage for these intelligent and far ranging animals. Zoos diminish our humanity.