alt.hn

2/7/2026 at 2:35:49 AM

Female Asian Elephant Calf Born at the Smithsonian National Zoo

 https://www.si.edu/newsdesk/releases/female-asian-elephant-calf-born-smithsonians-national-zoo-and-conservation?user_id=66c4bf745d78644b3aa57b08&utm_medium=email&utm_placement=newsletter&utm_source=join1440

by gmays

2/7/2026 at 10:33:28 AM

There have been seven Asian elephants born at the St Louis Zoo since 1992.

by assimpleaspossi

2/7/2026 at 8:38:39 AM

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?

by uxhacker

2/7/2026 at 8:49:18 AM

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?

by assaddayinh

2/7/2026 at 9:29:15 AM

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...

by riedel

2/7/2026 at 9:44:17 AM

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.

by assaddayinh

2/7/2026 at 9:58:54 AM

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.

by uxhacker

2/7/2026 at 8:26:00 AM

> [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

by Valodim

2/7/2026 at 4:34:37 AM

At last someone addresses it

by downboots

2/7/2026 at 4:44:16 AM

Ssshhh we don't talk about it

by tantalor

2/7/2026 at 9:00:24 AM

There is room for the elephant.

by usagisushi