Honolulu Zoo / In another tropical climate more than 11,000 miles from here, there is a path that winds down a valley, past a lagoon and through a grove of fig and mango trees, that, for generations, has been traveled by a herd of African elephants as they migrate through Zambia. When renovation of the Mfuwe Lodge expanded onto this stretch of land 11 years ago, the elephants paid little attention. Each November, as the mangoes ripen, the herd returns to eat fruit from the trees and to walk the familiar path as they always have. Only now, their course takes them through a hotel lobby.

That these enormous wild beasts opt not to change their route displays not that they are merely creatures of habit, but perhaps something that better resembles tradition. Scientists have long marveled at the emotional scope of our planet’s largest land mammal, struck by how closely the elephant experience reflects our own. Elephants display self-awareness—they recognize and inspect themselves in mirrors. They behave in ways associated with expressions of grief and compassion. They bury their dead, often covering them with leaves and sticks, they return to elephant gravesites over time and they can use tools to make art and music. Researchers are now exploring whether elephants, in addition to communicating through trumpeting calls and subsonic sounds, have separate dialects.

Perhaps these qualities are what lead us to anthropomorphize the giants—the same way we do with primates—when we encounter them at zoos. Trunks down, heads swaying, they look so serious, sad even.

“We wish we could do more for them,” said Honolulu Zoo spokesman Sid Quintal. “We’re trying to provide these elephants, these ambassadors of their species, with the best accommodations possible and I think they are being cared for better than they would have been in their natural habitat.”

Many zoos insist that elephants, without predators to harm them or poachers to hunt them, are safer and happier in captivity.

“It’s fair to say that there are some species that do better in zoos than others,” said Suzanne Roy, program director of In Defense of Animals. “But it has been clearly demonstrated that intelligent, free-ranging animals like elephants do not do well.”

A study released in December by the journal Science found that life expectancy for elephants plummets in captivity, nearly cutting in half an elephant’s normal lifespan of 60–70 years. Empress, the Asian elephant who arrived at the Honolulu Zoo in 1947, lived there until her death in 1986. She was 52. The two female Asian elephants who now call the Honolulu Zoo their home are Mari, 34, and Vaigai, 23.

According to records released by the zoo, management protocol for elephant handling is determined by the zoo’s Elephant Management Committee, which is a comprised of some of the zoo’s top officials and animal specialists. The committee is required to meet twice yearly to assess elephant handling and welfare.

But animal rights advocates say the quality of care Mari a Vaigai are receiving is subpar, including the use of circus-training tools like bullhooks, with which elephants are jabbed. In the past five years, Mari has been listed on zoo records as having had a “chronic wound abscess” associated with the tool, which the Honolulu Zoo’s employee handbook instructs zookeepers to use discreetly in front of the public.

“That would not have been from us,” said Quintal of Mari’s abscess. “We do have the device and people are very skilled in using it. It’s more used to get them to raise their trunk or move here and there but our people would face serious disciplinary action if I even heard of abuse of any of our animals. Mari came from India. Obviously we don’t know just what’s happened in her past.”

Even so, animal rights advocates insist that the bullhook is an antiquated means of abuse.

“It’s like a fireplace poker that they use to poke and prod and basically threaten the elephants,” said Catherine Doyle, a spokeswoman for In Defense of Animals. “It works to train them through the infliction of pain and discomfort.”

And while bullhooks are often a focal point that activists use to increase public awareness, there are aspects of captivity that are far more troubling, and more detrimental to elephant health. Life in captivity introduces serious, often deadly, dangers that elephants don’t face in the wild. Space constraints mean many zoo elephants are obese and develop cardiovascular diseases. Last April, Mari and Vaigai weighed in at a healthy 10,200 pounds and 9,750 pounds, respectively.

Even at healthy weights, more than 60 percent of elephants in captivity suffer from foot problems, which are the leading cause for euthanasia in captivity.

“Standing on concrete without the room to move, it causes foot infections which can go into the bone and kill the elephant,” said Doyle. “We often see them on painkillers and things that mask the symptoms. And for some of these animals, it’s a long slow death.”

Officials at the Honolulu Zoo have acknowledged the inadequacy of Mari and Vaigai’s living space and secured funding for a $6.7 million expansion to the elephants’ enclosure, construction of which is expected to start this summer with completion targeted for fall of 2010.

“They’re going to move to a very modern habitat,” said Quintal. “They’re going to get a lot more space. They’re going from about 6,000 square-feet to 36,000 square-feet.”

But even with an enclosure six times as large as the one Mari and Vaigai live in now, they’ll still have less than one acre in which to roam. The area will be nearly 10 times smaller than the elephants’ space at Disney’s Wild Kingdom in Orlando, Fla., one of the most spacious zoo habitats in the country, where elephants can wander 7.5 acres—or more than 326,000 square-feet—of land.

But the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) requires outdoor elephant enclosures to be just 1,800 square-feet, which elephant advocates argue is so tiny that the Honolulu Zoo’s multimillion dollar renovations—even while substantially larger than minimum standards—will be outdated even before the new exhibit opens.

“The standards are completely inadequate and inhumane,” said Roy. “It’s the size of six parking spaces for a 10,000-pound elephant who is biologically designed to walk 10 miles a day. These standards are not only outdated, but downright cruel. Many jurisdictions across the country have space requirements for horses that mandate more space, at least an acre, than what the AZA requires for elephants.”

Further, studies repeatedly show that life in a zoo can be emotionally distressing for elephants, who display neuroses like head shaking, rocking, swaying, head-bobbing not seen in the wild. Animal advocates estimate it costs 50 times more to keep elephants in zoos than it would to protect the same numbers of elephants in the wild.

This, and much of the data that has come out in the past decade regarding how elephants fare in captivity, has led some zoos to take action. Twelve zoos across the country have closed their elephant exhibits and six more are in the process of phasing them out, opting to send their animals to sprawling open-air habitats like The Elephant Sanctuary in Hohenwald, Tenn., where 18 elephants live on 2,700 acres. Meantime, the Honolulu Zoo is attempting to acquire another elephant, a bull, in hopes of breeding and expanding its collection.

“The notion that any of these zoos are saving elephants by displaying them has really been disproved,” Roy said. “They’ve been on display in zoos for 200 years and in the last 20 years, their numbers have dropped severely. Placing these very intelligent and complex individuals in conditions that are harmful for them, just so that we can look at them, teaches us nothing. There’s a sense of entitlement, that people have a right to elephants, and have a right to see elephants basically in every city in the country and, you know, that’s just really not true.”