KC Zoo elephant returned to exhibit after briefly leaving it, setting off ‘code red’
It took lots of food and help from other elephants, but Tamani, a 13-year-old African elephant, was returned to his exhibit at the Kansas City Zoo Wednesday after briefly he left his enclosure and wandered into a nearby area.
No zoo patrons or other animals were in any immediate danger, the zoo said as staff worked to return Tamani to his designated area, but the zoo posted on Twitter that it was “in an active code red situation.”
The incident happened about 3 p.m.
Randy Wisthoff, executive director and CEO of the zoo, said Tamani was in his outdoor pen when he “found a way a climb up and out of it.”
In the four years Tamani has been at the zoo, Wisthoff said the elephant had never posed an problem before in the pen. But on Wednesday, the zoo director said the elephant somehow climbed up on a shelf and then climbed again on a sheer rock wall.
“We remained calm and we got him to come back in. It took some coaxing,” Wisthoff said. “We used an awful lot of treats: watermelons, apples, hay cubes, baled alfalfa, anything we could think of. He finally came in and then we had to get him secure in the barn before we could make it an all-clear, so we brought a couple of different elephants down to be in the pen with him.”
First, they brought Lea, an older female elephant, to encourage Tamani to go back into the barn.
When that didn’t work, Wistoff said the staff brought out another female, Lady.
“Lady is kind of the enforcer in our elephant herd, and she came down, kind of did a little bit of elephant discipline and trumpeted at him and pushed him around a little bit and he came into the building,” Wistoff said. “Everything is safe and secure.”
The zoo plans to do some remodeling before Tamani returns to his outdoor pen.
The Kansas City Zoo acquired the bull African elephant in October 2015. Prior to that Tamani, which means “hope” in Swahili, resided at the Birmingham Zoo in Alabama with three other males, including his father. He is one of seven elephants staying at the Kansas City Zoo.
Tamani was born at the Tampa Zoo through artificial insemination. His mother came to the United States from Namibia, which made his genes valuable, zoo officials said at the time.
This story was originally published May 29, 2019 at 4:43 PM.
