Blues in the zoos

Now, a team that has worked with elephants says that those pachyderms born in zoos have shorter lives than their counterparts that live in the wild. It says that the average age of female African elephants born in zoos was 16.9 years whereas the ones in the wild, who died of natural causes, lived an average life of 56 years, which is three times as long. The same goes for female Asian elephants who lived for only 18.9 years in zoos while those in logging camps lived only 41.7 years. This, researchers concluded, was because of the harsh conditions and exposure to diseases.