How old is packy the elephant

Tim Storms, Oregon Zoo's lead veterinarian, said in the statement. None of us felt it would be right to do that.

But without treatment, his TB would have continued to get worse. Yet Frohoff doesn't buy this explanation. If anything, Frohoff believes the zoo killed Packy because he was no longer financially valuable.

Whatever the reasons for killing Packy, Frohoff believes that there's a bigger issue at stake of zoos killing animals for convenience. For instance, in , Copenhagen Zoo killed a healthy, young male giraffe simply because he didn't fit the needs of their breeding program - the facility has also killed numerous lions, including an entire family of young cubs who had been bred by the zoo just a few months earlier. This is another example of why we're against zoos.

Oregon Zoo was also listed as one of the 10 worst zoos in the United States in by IDA, mainly for removing an 8-year-old Asian bull named Samundra from his mother, Rose-Tu, when he should have still been living with her, and also for beating Rose-Tu. Team Packy could not be reached for comment, but they wrote of their sadness in a recent Facebook post : "As I am sure most of you have heard, the worst has happened. Packy was put down this morning. We want to thank you all for your help and support in trying to stop this from happening, we can at least live with ourselves knowing that we did everything we could to try to change the minds of the director and assistant director in this matter.

Packy was born to Belle and Thonglaw at the Oregon Zoo shortly before 6 a. He was the first elephant to be born in North America in 44 years. Newspapers and radio stations around the world announced the birth of the pound baby, and Life magazine covered the event with an page spread describing "The Nativity of Packy. Packy spent his life surrounded by his extended herd and caretakers.

When male elephants come of age in the wild, they leave their families and spend most of their time on their own or in bachelor groups, only interacting with the females periodically. It was the same for Packy. Despite having access to the rest of the elephants for most of his life, he preferred to be on his own. Portland was Packy's home, and he was a fixture in the community.

Over the course of his life, he was featured in books, parade floats, murals and songs. When Packy moved into the Elephant Lands habitat on May 26, , he was poised almost literally between the past and the future. Behind him, the Eisenhower-era elephant barn in which he was born — constructed when the zoo first moved to its current Washington Park location in — and before him, the impressive new indoor facility that promises to usher in a new era in elephant welfare.

Elephant Lands was designed specifically with Packy in mind — both as a comfortable home for him to live out his golden years in, and as a legacy to all he has helped us learn about his species. But without treatment, his TB would have continued to get worse. We consulted other experts — veterinarians and pharmacists — and a lot of people were involved in this decision, but that didn't make it any easier.

Anybody who's had a sick or elderly pet knows how painful this can be, even if you know it's the best thing for the animal. Don Moore, zoo director. Packy arrived shortly before 6 a. He would become one of the best-known animals in the world — inspiring books, records, Rose Parade floats — and much of what we now know about elephant care can be traced back to him. His birth, and those that followed over the next 20 years in Portland, helped scientists better understand Asian elephants and ushered in a new era in the species' care and welfare.

In the late s, the zoo's first veterinarian, Matthew Maberry, was part of a team working to design facilities that provided elephants with much more freedom than was common in zoos at the time. These facilities, built in , allowed for normal social interactions and natural breeding among the elephants, which led to a string of successful pregnancies and births over the next two decades.