Elephants in zoos face profound welfare challenges related to space, social complexity, and the fundamental mismatch between their needs as wide-ranging, highly intelligent animals and the constraints of captive facilities.
Zoo elephant welfare sits at the heart of a broader debate about whether large, highly intelligent, wide-ranging animals can be kept humanely in captivity at all. The evidence from decades of welfare research is sobering: foot disease, stereotypic behaviour, reproductive failure, and high infant mortality are pervasive even in facilities with strong welfare commitments. Improvements — larger spaces, better substrates, more complex social groupings — help at the margins but cannot replicate the fundamental conditions of wild elephant life. The most welfare-forward response may be transitioning existing zoo elephant populations to large-scale sanctuaries while phasing out new acquisitions, allowing existing animals the best possible conditions without perpetuating a system that cannot meet their needs.