Blair Drummond Safari Park

Mondula heads outside

I went up to Stirling during half term week to meet Chris Hales, Head of Large Mammals, and Alistair Gillies, Chief Research Officer at Blair Drummond Safari Park.

Blair Drummond keep two African elephants, Mondula and Toto.  
We chatted about concepts for providing elephants with alternative enrichment, using technology to enable various systems.  I'm still keen to pursue acoustic stimulation, while Ally and Chris would like to offer control over different features in the environment, such as heat lamps and showers.

The inner walls of the barn have ready-made holes, designed for browsing.  This means that a system could potentially be mounted on the other side, so the elephants would need to reach through with their trunks to use controls.  This would be a good idea, as it would prevent them from using their full strength on the device.

Mondula at the fence

Chris showed me dents in a stainless steel bar 3m above the ground, caused by Mondula tusking.  He suggested that anything mounted inside the walls would have to be encased in a steel box to be elephant-proof!

Plans to follow up this visit with some concept sketches and suggestions for future research.