Hogle Zoo officials said Tuesday they will not release a video of the Aug. 10 birth of an elephant at the Salt Lake City animal park.
"The birth footage is internal video used for scientific review purposes," said zoo spokeswoman Holly Braithwaite. "It's not something we chose to publicly release."
The footage, which was shown to the zoo's board of directors on Monday afternoon, shows elephant Christy with her front legs chained, stretching and moving around as two trainers stand nearby.
Hogle Zoo is a protected-contact zoo, where elephants and their keepers are generally separated by a fence. Staff members explained on Monday that arrangement was "modified" for the safety of Christy, the calf and the keepers, and it included months of practice to prepare the pregnant cow to accept the harnesses and the presence of the keepers in her enclosure.
Hogle -- which receives millions in public subsidies each year but remains a private, nonprofit institution -- is not alone in protecting video of elephant births, although other zoos have allowed the public to view the process.
The Oregon Zoo released footage of the birth of an Asian elephant last year. More than 20,000 YouTube viewers have watched the video, which shows mother Rose-Tu, unchained and alongside several other elephants, pacing about her pen before releasing the baby in a splash of blood. And Oregon Zoo spokeswoman Linda D'Ae-Smith said that members of the Portland media were on hand to view a live feed of the birth and aired the footage that same day.
D'Ae-Smith acknowledged that if something had gone wrong in the birth, the entire world would have been able to watch. "But let's say the worst happened," she said. "At some point we would have had to have gone and explained that. We would have lost all credibility if we didn't."
She noted, however, that zoos make different decisions based on "what they feel is in the best interest of the animals in their care."
But if that's the case, said animal-rights activist Suzanne Roy, Hogle should be willing to release its video.
Roy, program director for the group In Defense of Animals, said she finds the practice of chaining elephants and keeping them separated from other members of their herd to be "cruel" and "barbaric." But, she said, "if they think it's an acceptable practice, they should release the video and let people judge for themselves."
Braithwaite, however, said that the zoo had decided not to release the footage because "it would be easy to misconstrue." She said that in order to understand the video in context, viewers would need to be given "scientific or veterinary explanation about what is going on."
