At the Age of 50, an Elderly Female Elephant Dies at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo

When an Asian elephant named Kamala arrived at the Smithsonian's National Zoo in 2013, she was welcomed with much celebration to newly renovated digs. Now, more than 11 years later, at an estimated advanced age of 50 years old, the staff of the National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute chose to ethically euthanize her. She had degnerative osteoarthritis.

“The elephant care team fondly remembers Kamala as a smart and inquisitive individual who held a dominant role within the herd,” the Zoo says in a statement. “She built strong bonds with her keepers and enjoyed their attention. Whenever keepers approached, she would rumble and squeak, behaviors that indicated her happiness and excitement.”

She came to Washington as a 38-year-old alongside Maharani, 23, and Swarna, also 38, as part of a loan from Canada's Calgary Zoo. There, they joined four other elephants in the Zoo's new Elephant House, redesigned to encourage social behavior. At the time of its opening in 2013, elephant manager Marie Galloway told Smithsonian, “One of our major goals of this project [was] to create an environment where elephants can live as a more natural social unit. That [meant] creating a multi-generational related herd of elephants.” 

Kamala was born in the wild in Sri Lanka around 1975. She was orphaned while still a calf, and briefly lived at the Pinnawala Elephant Orphanage in Sri Lanka before she was moved to Canada, where she stayed for many years and birthed two calves, a welcome arrival considering the species' status as endangered. Her arrival at the National Zoo was a reunion of sorts; she had already lived with the Zoo’s Shanthi and Bozie in Sri Lanka before making the journey to different zoos across North America. 

When she came to Washington, the care staff immediately noticed that her front legs were knock-kneed, and her back legs were bow-legged—a condition that made Kamala predisposed to developing osteoarthritis. Arthritis is currently incurable, but the Zoo staff managed her condition with various treatments and therapies to slow down the degenerative disease and lessen the pain.

In 2020, the Washington Post reported on the Zoo's process for euthanizing its elephants, writing that such decisions are "made with deliberation and only when the zoo concludes that there is nothing more it can do to keep the animal from suffering." That year, two of the Zoo's elephants died, one of whom was 72 and the third-oldest in North America at the time.

Kamala was “strongly bonded to her caretakers,” per the statement, and “voluntarily participated in routine training sessions as well as twice-daily physical therapy sessions.” Recently, however, the staff noted that her range of motion had become seriously limited and that she’d started standing in a single spot instead of moving about as she usually did, which they took as a sign that the arthritis had overcome the effect of the pain medication.

“Given Kamala’s declining quality of life and poor long-term prognosis, animal care staff made the decision to humanely euthanize her,” according to the statement. Kamala was euthanized in the Zoo’s Elephant Barn, and the other six Asian elephants in her herd were allowed to spend time with her body after the procedure. The elephants “investigated” the corpse, and were “gentle, calm and respectful.”

Scientists have long noted elephants’ unique interaction with their dead, especially behaviors that suggest grieving.

"Understanding elephants' response to death might have some far-reaching effects on their conservation," Sanjeeta Sharma Pokharel and Nachiketha Sharma, respectively an ecologist and post-doctoral fellow at Kyoto University who co-authored a study in 2022 that used YouTube videos to analyze Asian elephants’ response to death, told Live Science’s Stephanie Pappas. "We have personally observed that when people witness an elephant responding to a dead kin, there will be some sense of relatedness, compassion and empathy towards the species. Therefore, anything which instantly connects people might pave the way for coexistence in elephant ranging countries."

Human development is encroaching on elephants’ habitats. This conflict is further exacerbated by climate change, which is shifting elephant habitats and bringing human communities and elephant herds into close contact. Human-elephant coexistence is a difficult topic specifically in Sri Lanka, where 176 people died from elephant encounters in 2023, per the BBC’s Anbarasan Ethirajan. Every year, about 200 elephants also die from such conflicts in Sri Lanka.

Scientists estimate that there are between 30,000 and 50,000 Asian elephants left in the world, and are calling for further habitat conservation action, wildlife corridors and conflict management efforts to help preserve the endangered species.

Margherita Bassi | READ MORE

Margherita Bassi is a freelance journalist and trilingual storyteller. Her work has appeared in publications including BBC Travel, Discover magazine, Live Science, Atlas Obscura and Hidden Compass.