[HN Gopher] Female Asian Elephant Calf Born at the Smithsonian N...
___________________________________________________________________
Female Asian Elephant Calf Born at the Smithsonian National Zoo
Author : gmays
Score : 71 points
Date : 2026-02-07 02:35 UTC (20 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.si.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.si.edu)
| downboots wrote:
| At last someone addresses it
| tantalor wrote:
| Ssshhh we don't talk about it
| usagisushi wrote:
| There is room for the elephant.
| dennis_jeeves2 wrote:
| There room in the elephant.
| fuzzythinker wrote:
| Direct source with better readability and many pictures:
|
| https://nationalzoo.si.edu/news/female-asian-elephant-calf-b...
|
| And even more pictures and info on Asian elephants:
|
| https://nationalzoo.si.edu/animals/news/get-know-herd-asian-...
| Valodim wrote:
| > [this individual] will help strengthen the genetic diversity of
| the Asian elephant population in North America and around the
| world.
|
| I'm happy for them that there is now a calf after a long time,
| but this sentence doesn't read as hopeful as the author probably
| intended
| uxhacker wrote:
| So there are now 55000 and 1 Asian elephants*. I don't understand
| the newsworthiness of having an extra Asian elephant joining the
| other 15000 Asian elephants in captivity.
|
| Wild Asian elephants roam between 100km2 to 1500km2. This
| elephant will spend a life confined to just how many square km's?
| assaddayinh wrote:
| The conquest for utopian perfection is the enemy of all good
| things. In the wild she would be poached, hunted and ground dow
| into medieval medicine, while contained to ever more little
| islands of wild.
|
| Please god free us from those who want to burn the bakery,
| because they think tomorrow it will rain manna from the
| heavens. No curse us greater then a rampant idealist, unwilling
| to sense reality.
|
| PS: Why not have pragmatic solutions where there are elephant
| days where the herd to roam in a park?
| riedel wrote:
| While I totally agree, the underlying conflict is that Zoos
| over use the argument of preservation these days. On the
| other end they certainly have the need to stay entertainment
| venues, a conflict which they seldomly address.
|
| Recently there was a obviously necessary mass culling of
| baboons in the Nuremberg zoo which shows some of the
| controversy [1]
|
| [1] https://www.greenmemag.com/animals/the-nuremberg-zoo-
| controv...
| assaddayinh wrote:
| They could have hunting preserves, basically areas sharedby
| predators and prey similar to nature as enrichment, but
| that would be cruelty for the cityZens.
|
| Im argueing against nature preserves in poorer countries,
| where western nations deluded citizens pay to keep a piece
| of nature which are basically mirages of "intactness" in
| economic good times, vanishing from the earth entirely in
| economic bad times. Which the very same proponents usually
| argue for with degrowth arguments.
| uxhacker wrote:
| So it will cost at least 100,000 usd to keep this poor
| elephant confined in a zoo in the US versus about 15,000 in a
| wild sanctuary in Thailand.
|
| In the wild sanctuary it will have space to roam.
| cultofmetatron wrote:
| zoos and aquariums serve a very vital purpose. most people
| only care about these animals because they can go SEE them
| alive. documentaries help but nothing beats getting a captive
| people into a room to see a wild animal and then bamboozling
| them with propaganda about how important it is to preserve
| these animals. Its the reason we have funding to keep these
| creatures alive in the wild at all.
|
| if all zoos and aquariums were shut down, public concern
| about the environment would slowly drift to nothing within 2
| generations.
| eleveriven wrote:
| At the same time, I think it's risky to lean too hard on
| the idea that captivity is the only way to sustain concern
| throaway54 wrote:
| It isn't, but its often been the only reason that a
| species didn't go extinct.
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| Pandas being one of those species. I feel as if pandas
| would go extinct if zoos weren't there.
|
| technically panda's cuteness is the reason why it hasn't
| really gotten extinct. Dogs/Cats have also mastered the
| cuteness stat. I wonder if for animals, evolution might
| now lean towards cuteness.
|
| I am also thinking what counts as cute in the first
| place? Is there any scientific consensus around cuteness
| that animals can develop?
| dyauspitr wrote:
| To be fair, elephant hunting and poaching in India over the
| last 20 odd years is negligible. I believe it accounts for
| less than 1% of elephant deaths since 2010.
| eleveriven wrote:
| Yet framing it as either captivity or guaranteed death is
| also a bit of a false binary. Zoos are a mitigation strategy,
| not a moral end state
| eleveriven wrote:
| Zoos are a tradeoff: constrained lives in exchange for
| research, genetic insurance... And whether that tradeoff is
| worth it depends entirely on whether the off-site work actually
| helps wild populations
| mikkupikku wrote:
| Every single elephant is precious.
| assimpleaspossi wrote:
| There have been seven Asian elephants born at the St Louis Zoo
| since 1992.
| eleveriven wrote:
| The key difference is that births like those (and this one)
| aren't about "we need more elephants," they're about which
| elephants survive and reproduce
| assimpleaspossi wrote:
| Well, "[Raja] was the first elephant ever born at the Saint
| Louis Zoo and is considered a St. Louis legend. Male Asian
| elephant Raja, born amid fanfare nearly 31 years ago on Dec.
| 27, 1992, has three daughters at the Zoo..."
|
| https://stlzoo.org/news/elephant-news
| eleveriven wrote:
| I do appreciate that they're explicit about why this matters
| (genetic diversity, SSP, long-term conservation work) instead of
| just treating it as zoo PR
| vscode-rest wrote:
| Everything you listed is zoo PR, just for a different target
| audience.
|
| (that doesn't make it bad)
| kelipso wrote:
| Whenever someone mentions Asian elephants in American zoos, I
| remember my visit to Columbus zoo, where they treated the Asian
| elephants like African elephants. Very dry environment, very
| little water, feeding them dry hay, just absolutely atrocious
| treatment.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2026-02-07 23:01 UTC)