A recent study reported that African and Asian elephants living in zoos have a far shorter life than their wild and working siblings. The researchers pointed out that stress and obesity issues are the most important among the causes of the shorter life expectancy. Still, they stated that the zoos should not abandon the animals.

Even though the study shows that life expectancy for elephants in zoos somewhat grew, there is still a considerable gap between animals in zoos and the others. The average life span of the African elephant was of 56 years in the Kenyan national park, compared to a mere 16.9 years in the zoo. The Asian elephants live a little bit longer in zoos, about 18.9 years, but it is still lower than the ones used by the Myanmar government, which live for approximately 41.7 years.

Reactions aroused immediately from the Association of Zoos and Aquariums. Paul Boyle, the senior vice president for conservation and education at the association stated that the study is “terribly flawed” because no zoo from the United States has imported elephants for a long time. Regarding the comparison between wild and captive elephants life expectancy, Boyle declared that the data didn’t take into account wild elephants killed by people and doesn’t reflect present-time conditions of zoos.

The research is based on information about 4,500 elephants, from researches made from 1960 until 2005. There was data collected from African and Asian elephants in European Zoos, African elephants from Amboseli National Park in Kenya and Asian elephants used in lumber harvesting by the Myanmar Timber Enterprise, the Myanmar government agency dealing with lumber trades. The research calculated the average death and birth rate of the elephants, excluding premature and still births.