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Sunday, December 01, 2002

By Anita Srikameswaran, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

If only it were possible to talk with the elephants.

Then it might be easy to figure what was best for them, as well as the people who take care of them.

The Nov. 18 death of keeper Mike Gatti, killed by an elephant while he was walking her before opening time through the Pittsburgh Zoo and PPG Aquarium, has forced zoo officials to take another look at how they manage the multi-ton animals. They have made no decisions, in part because it's not so easy to figure out what makes a 10,000-pound animal happy and its considerably smaller keeper safe.

After the accident, animal rights activists called for zoo officials to switch their elephant management procedures to what is known as "protected contact," in which a barrier of some kind is always between the animals and their keepers. The Pittsburgh zoo, like many around the nation, predominantly uses the "free contact" system, in which keepers work right next to the female and younger elephants.

But the debate over which approach to use goes far beyond protecting the keepers from harm. It involves a fundamental dispute over how to train elephants and whether the traditional method uses too much "negative reinforcement."

The champions of the protected contact system are animal behavior specialist Gail Laule and her partner, Tim Desmond, who developed it about 10 years ago not just to make human keepers safer, but to train animals using only positive reinforcement methods.

Laule said the problem with the free contact approach is not only that it often involves keepers using a pointed stick called an ankus in elephant training, but it also means a keeper has to become the dominant personality in the elephants' social hierarchy, because the keeper is working right next to them.

Other elephant trainers say Laule's ideas not only are wrong, but actually can cause more harm to elephants if a crisis occurs and someone has to make physical contact with them.

Pittsburgh uses both

The Pittsburgh zoo actually uses a mix of the two approaches.

It employs protected contact with its bull elephant because males are typically too aggressive to be managed safely in close contact. But cows and calves are managed with free contact, which is what allows keepers to exercise the animals by walking them through the zoo grounds.

Whether Gatti's death will change that system is unknown.

As curator Lee Nesler put it, "We're evaluating right now and trying to determine which way we need to go to satisfy the animals' needs and the keeper safety need."

About half of all zoos, including San Diego Wild Animal Park and Oakland Zoo in California, have switched to protected contact.

In both protected and free contact, the goal is to train elephants so staff can take care of their medical needs and promote their general well-being.

"We work on husbandry behaviors, so we can observe them and do any medical procedures we need to do," Nesler said. "We need them to open their mouths to check their teeth, to pick up their trunks, to check their eyes, lay them down and check their backs. We want to encourage natural behaviors and interfere as little as possible."

When done right, free contact carries out those tasks very well, contended John Kirtland, executive director of animal stewardship for Feld Entertainment, which is an umbrella group that covers Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus and runs an elephant conservation center in Florida.

"The traditional free contact system has been in place for 4,000 years," Kirtland said, and, "It is still the most effective and the most humane way to work with elephants."

The hallmark tool of the free contact system is the ankus, which is a staff of variable length, but usually long enough to allow a keeper to reach the elephant's back. One end is pointed and includes a sharp hook.

In training, a keeper might place the pointy tip of the ankus under the trunk while issuing a verbal command. The tip is annoying, so the elephant lifts its trunk in avoidance. The keeper may then reward the animal with a treat, such as a jelly bean or a carrot. Gradually, the elephant learns to lift its trunk in response to the command, rather than the touch of the ankus.

To some animal activists, the ankus is an implement of torture.

But Kirtland said it was nothing more than a training tool that happens to be a so-called negative reinforcer. The mistake people commonly make is thinking that positive reinforcement is good and negative reinforcement is bad.

Just like a leash

The ankus serves the same purpose, Kirtland said, as a dog's leash and collar, a horse's bit and bridle, or a car's indicator buzzer when seat belts aren't fastened.

"It's an annoying buzzer and to escape it, you buckle your seat belt," he said. "It increases your safety in your car, so it's a good thing."

Kirtland said, however, that the ankus wasn't the only training method used in free contact.

"If I was training an elephant in free contact and the elephant was not paying attention or was just in a different world, I might take a time out. I would simply take my bag of apples and carrots and walk away," he said, adding that punishment of this or any other kind "should be used rarely, only in very specific circumstances and only by very skilled trainers."

Chuck Doyle, general curator of the Rosamond Gifford Zoo in Syracuse, N.Y., is the executive director of the Elephant Managers Association and teaches the course in elephant training principles for the American Zoo and Aquarium Association.

He said trainers preferred to call the ankus a "guide" because that's how it should be used. A light tap with the ankus may be needed occasionally to cue the animal. Although the keepers always carry them, it is used less frequently as the animal learns.

"You have to react appropriately," Doyle said. "If an elephant made an aggressive move and you disciplined it by smacking it on trunk, and the elephant stopped that behavior and you continued, then you're wrong. The use of the discipline is to stop and hopefully extinguish that aggressive behavior."

But Laule, the protected contact founder, said she could achieve the same results as the free contact practitioners without using any negative reinforcement.

For example, to train an elephant to lift its trunk in this system, the keeper may use a pole with a float on the end of it that is placed above the trunk. When the trunk is raised toward the target, the elephant gets a treat to positively reinforce the behavior.

"There's no negative reinforcement used and if the animal says no, there's absolutely no physical punishment," Laule said. "It then becomes my job as the trainer to make it worthwhile for the animal to say yes."

With her techniques, animals can still be taught to present body parts for medical inspection and other purposes, but a barrier such as a gate or a moat prevents the keeper and animal from directly touching. And, Laule acknowledged, an elephant may refuse to approach the barrier to interact with the keeper.

When her consulting company, Active Environments, has helped zoos switch from free contact to protected contact, "Often, there will be this period of time when the elephants exercise their ability to say no," she said. "It can be extremely frustrating for people, especially for someone who has been used to not letting that happen."

And for some keepers, getting themselves out of the elephant yard is difficult because of their strong attachment to the animals.

Kirtland said, though, that there were definite drawbacks to protected contact.

"Elephants in protected contact systems do not receive adequate exercise," he said. "Minor injuries and illnesses often go untreated and serious injuries or illnesses cannot be treated without the use of chemical or physical restraint, which often results in further injury or even death. That is unacceptable to me."

If an elephant is sick and collapses in the middle of the yard, a protected contact worker cannot go see what's wrong and the animal may be unwilling or unable to come to the barrier.

While smaller animals, such as tigers or gorillas, can be anesthetized and transferred for a thorough examination, elephants are very difficult to move after sedation. If they lie down for too long, they can develop dangerous pressure sores on weight-bearing surfaces. And there's a big risk that they won't wake up after they've been anesthetized, Kirtland said.

In the free contact system he works in, "We have a relationship with those animals. We can move around them," he said. "When they give birth, we are right there in the birthing stall with them. We establish a relationship from the day they're born that extends through the remainder of their lives and that allows us to work safely around them."

But Laule said that approach, particularly when the ankus is used, was also designed to make the human keeper the socially dominant creature in the elephant family. "It makes this little human being, who is one hundredth the size of the elephant, powerful."

Kirtland scoffed at the idea that free contact training works by asserting the human's dominance over the animal.

At 6 feet 4 inches tall and 240 pounds, "I'm a pretty big guy," he said. "But does anybody really think I could dominate a 12,000-pound elephant? If an elephant doesn't like what I'm doing, he or she is not going to put up with it."

The risk of animal abuse exists in either system, Kirtland said. There are bad apples in every profession, and if someone really wants to hurt the elephants, they'll find a way to do it, with or without an ankus.

Kirtland, who has consulted for the Pittsburgh zoo in the past, said switching to protected contact management for the elephant that killed its keeper would probably be "punishing the animal for a natural reaction" in an atypical situation.

But Laule feels strongly that the switch must be made.

"I honestly can't imagine them continuing to do free contact with her," she said. "How could you possibly feel comfortable having your keepers continue to be in physical contact with her?"

If only it were possible to ask the elephants.