Elephants in Captivity/USA/Florida:

Miami Metro Zoo:

Miami Metro Zoo has 1.2 Loxodonta africana
Name	Sex	Born	Origin	Arrival	From
Machito	M	1979	Wild, Africa	1981	?
Mabel	F	1976?	Wild, Africa	1979	?
Peggy	F	1976?	Wild, Africa	1979	?
Miami Metro Zoo has 1.0 Elephas maximus
Dalip	M	1965	captive bred India	1967	?

There are 2 elephant keepers.

Contactperson: Senior elephant keeper George Smith (Elephant George) gave 22 Aug 98 this information about the elephants:

Dulip is proven breeder who produced 4 calves with one female here, last calf died at another facility along with female. From info I was given baby had crytalized in female and she died during surgery to remove fetus.Of the other 3 calves born at miami only one survived more than one month and that one is named spike and is currently at Calgary Zoo. Dalip and his female were away from miami after hurricane of 1992 destroyed exhibit and housed by ringling in northern florida until 1995. His female was shipped to a midwest zoo where she and calf died. Our female elephants are worked free contact and our bulls are worked protected contact. Personally I prefer free contact but bulls have been protected for many years now and zoo would never go back to free contact with bulls. African bull has shown ability to be very dangerous, Asian bull is very good other than when in musth. Both bulls submit foot thru bar to be chained and then you can enter from rear of stall to chain rear leg Once on chains we do go in and do foot work and baths. The only time we do not try and chain bulls is when they are in musth. Normally our elephants are not chained at night as our stalls are so designed. Each elephant has it's own stall. The only time we normally chain an elephant is during special times of concern like vet visits. Currently we draw blood from our african cows once per week for estrogen levels, I hope to soon start drawing blood more often during the times the cows are cycling maybe even doing before mixing with bull and after. We just started mixing our bull with our cows last weekand have had several attempts at breeding but no real success yet, my one female peggy should be cycling in next week so hope to have some real serious attempts then.

Revised: July 28, 1998