Just like the city of Cincinnati works to keep people safe from the heat, the Cincinnati Zoo is making sure its animals have multiple options for staying cool.
Cheetah pups get frozen meat popsicles and the big cats can chill in indoor habitats or bask in the sun, as they sometimes choose to do instead. Many animals at the zoo, like elephants, also have access to watering holes during the summer.
Midday on Wednesday, June 25, four of the zoo’s eight Asian elephants were hanging out around the watering hole in their new Elephant Trek habitat. However, it was really only the two boy calves, Kabir and Sanjay, who got into the water and played after popping apples and celery into their mouths.
Ison said she believes that the elephants’ favorite season is summer. “They get to be outside all night and have access to the pool,” Keeper Christy Ison said. Sometimes, when Ison starts her shift at 7 a.m., she’ll see that Kabir and Sanjay have already had their first swim of the day.
“They’re very rough and tumble,” Ison said, adding that the two calves remind her of her own sons.
Elephants have ways of staying cool during heat wave
Ison said this species of elephant is “tough” and used to the humidity since it’s native to interior Asia, India and Southeast Asia. Still, the elephants are not used to this “baking heat.”
She said that they’re given “cool hose drinks,” fans with misters in their barns and lots of shade thanks to the zoo’s horticulturalists. Dipping into the waterhole is only one way these guys cool themselves down.
Using her trunk, one of the habitat’s female elephants, also called a cow, hosed herself off instead of getting into the water fully.
Ison said it’s common for elephants to cover or “dust” themselves with a layer of dirt to protect their skin and regulate their body temperature. Aside from dusting, elephants will cover themselves in mud to stay cool and keep insects from bothering them. Ison said she and other keepers build mud wallows for the elephants to use, but they usually end up building their own mud wallows in different spots.
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: See how Asian elephants at the Cincinnati Zoo keep cool in extreme heat
Reporting by Gillian Stawiszynski, Cincinnati Enquirer / Cincinnati Enquirer
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
