Friday 13th November
We had a full day of lectures, so were based in the hotel all day. The main topic for the day was digestion and the associated anatomy. We had excellent lectures from Professor Fowler and Dr Fagan – a zoo dentist from America. Professor Kurt gave a couple of lectures on the relationship between food intake and growth and behaviour of elephants in the wild and in captivity. We also had a lecture on nutrition of zoo elephants – we all got a packet of elephant biscuits to take back for our elephants (I have managed to squish mine, which is very unfortunate). We finished the day with a talk about the African elephant situation and conservation in South Africa.
Saturday 14th November
This day was based fully in the elephant barn as it was concerned with training elephants, both in free contact and protected contact systems. This was delivered through a series of lectures and demonstrations of training and its variety of applications. I also put my hand in an elephant’s mouth today – yuk! A few people thought it was funny that I am a bit nervous around the elephants, but I think I’m being quite sensible about it. I’ve only ever worked with one elephant who cannot be touched, and I think it’s irresponsible to just go to an animal and put your hand in its mouth (or tickle it or whatever) just because someone else says it’s ok.
We also had an extremely interesting talk from a PhD student who has been looking at vocal communication in Asian elephants. It was fascinating, particularly the videos of playing vocalisations to zoo elephants and seeing their reactions. I am quite interested in getting copies of some of the sounds and playing them to Boy as a form of enrichment – it should also be an interesting experiment as he hasn’t been in contact with any other elephants for a long time – I would like to see how he reacts to it. He’s a fairly quiet elephant, but he might like to listen to other elephant sounds. Maybe I’m anthropomorphising too much, but at the moment I am very happy to be surrounded by many English speakers, whereas in Kyiv the options for conversation and listening are limited. Perhaps it will be the same for Boy?
The last lecture of the day was on the topic of measuring behaviours, which I have already done for Boy but will continue to do so. The talk was given by a lecturer from Colombo University (Sri Lanka) Devaka Weerakoon who I have met previously in Sri Lanka and is good friends with my friend Dr Ganga at Colombo Zoo.
I had a fairly quiet evening, many of the others were out in town eating and drinking. I stayed back for a quiet drink and elephant talk with some of the zoo staff.
We had a full day of lectures, so were based in the hotel all day. The main topic for the day was digestion and the associated anatomy. We had excellent lectures from Professor Fowler and Dr Fagan – a zoo dentist from America. Professor Kurt gave a couple of lectures on the relationship between food intake and growth and behaviour of elephants in the wild and in captivity. We also had a lecture on nutrition of zoo elephants – we all got a packet of elephant biscuits to take back for our elephants (I have managed to squish mine, which is very unfortunate). We finished the day with a talk about the African elephant situation and conservation in South Africa.
Saturday 14th November
This day was based fully in the elephant barn as it was concerned with training elephants, both in free contact and protected contact systems. This was delivered through a series of lectures and demonstrations of training and its variety of applications. I also put my hand in an elephant’s mouth today – yuk! A few people thought it was funny that I am a bit nervous around the elephants, but I think I’m being quite sensible about it. I’ve only ever worked with one elephant who cannot be touched, and I think it’s irresponsible to just go to an animal and put your hand in its mouth (or tickle it or whatever) just because someone else says it’s ok.
We also had an extremely interesting talk from a PhD student who has been looking at vocal communication in Asian elephants. It was fascinating, particularly the videos of playing vocalisations to zoo elephants and seeing their reactions. I am quite interested in getting copies of some of the sounds and playing them to Boy as a form of enrichment – it should also be an interesting experiment as he hasn’t been in contact with any other elephants for a long time – I would like to see how he reacts to it. He’s a fairly quiet elephant, but he might like to listen to other elephant sounds. Maybe I’m anthropomorphising too much, but at the moment I am very happy to be surrounded by many English speakers, whereas in Kyiv the options for conversation and listening are limited. Perhaps it will be the same for Boy?
The last lecture of the day was on the topic of measuring behaviours, which I have already done for Boy but will continue to do so. The talk was given by a lecturer from Colombo University (Sri Lanka) Devaka Weerakoon who I have met previously in Sri Lanka and is good friends with my friend Dr Ganga at Colombo Zoo.
I had a fairly quiet evening, many of the others were out in town eating and drinking. I stayed back for a quiet drink and elephant talk with some of the zoo staff.
It's difficult to concentrate when there is an elephant in the classroom 
Meeting another elephant
Babies playing in sand pile
Baby elephant having a chat with Head Keeper - Thorsten
Babies playing with branches
Devaka from Sri Lanka
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