Elephants at Singapore Zoo will no longer be commanded to perform during shows, as part of a shift in its model of care for the park's five female specimens.

Instead of performing stunts like balancing on logs, during the twice-daily presentations that play out to crowds of hundreds, the Asian elephants will be encouraged to display "natural behaviour", the zoo said on Friday (Sept 21).

Enrichment toys - which require the mammals to figure out how to obtain treats such as bananas and popcorn hidden within - will be scattered throughout the exhibit for the elephants to interact with, providing the show's main entertainment.

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Elephants at Singapore Zoo will no longer be commanded to perform during shows, as part of a shift in its model of care for the park's five female specimens.

Instead of performing stunts like balancing on logs, during the twice-daily presentations that play out to crowds of hundreds, the Asian elephants will be encouraged to display "natural behaviour", the zoo said on Friday (Sept 21).

Enrichment toys - which require the mammals to figure out how to obtain treats such as bananas and popcorn hidden within - will be scattered throughout the exhibit for the elephants to interact with, providing the show's main entertainment.

Keepers will now be stationed outside the exhibit, providing commentary and using positive reinforcement methods to get them to do things like lie in water.

The show's new format, which will officially be launched on Elephant Appreciation Day on Saturday, is among the steps that Wildlife Reserves Singapore (WRS) has taken in recent years to move towards a protected contact management system for its 11 elephants. Besides the five at the zoo, another six elephants are housed at the Night Safari.

The system entails maintaining a physical barrier between the keepers and elephants at all times, which provides more safety for keepers and better welfare for the animals.

Training and interaction are conducted through the barrier, often using treats and target sticks in favour of direct physical touch to cue desired behaviour.

In the new show, "the elephants will be allowed to be elephants", Dr Cheng Wen-Haur, deputy chief executive of WRS told The Straits Times in a recent interview.

Keepers are trained "in the traditional method where they go in there and command elephants to do certain things. So now we are in the process of training our staff to use positive reinforcement, meaning the elephants will want to do something because they are rewarded", he said.

Since embarking on the move towards protected contact for all of its elephants in 2015, WRS has stopped elephant rides and painting sessions - in which elephants would put use their trunks to paint - among other efforts.

Safety is another big reason why WRS decided to adopt protected contact management for its elephants, which has become the norm in countries like the United States over the last two decades.

Chawang, a male elephant now housed in the Night Safari, gored a keeper and badly injured him in 2001, though there have been no incidents since. Pic: Junior elephant keepers Mohamad Fathli Mohd Jamil and Nursyafiqah Mohamed Yusof wheeling out fruits for the 11.30am elephant show on Sept 13.

Junior elephant keeper Nursyafiqah Mohamed Yusof preparing the elephants' morning feed, which consists of oats, chaff, mineral salt block powder, wheat bran and pellets in the zoo's back of house area 

Junior elephant keeper Nursyafiqah Mohamed Yusof, who is one of the core presenters of the show, said that when she joined the zoo a year ago, she was nervous at the thought of working up close with the creatures, which weigh about 3,000kg on average.

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Elephants at Singapore Zoo will no longer be commanded to perform during shows, as part of a shift in its model of care for the park's five female specimens. Instead of performing stunts like balancing on logs, during the twice-daily presentations that play out to crowds of hundreds, the Asian elephants will be encouraged to display "natural behaviour", the zoo...

No more elephant performances at Singapore Zoo