Trunks down, we lost a very special elephant last week. On Tuesday, May 26, 55-year-old Asian elephant Happy paraded across the rainbow bridge from her home of 49 years, the Bronx Zoo. Born in Thailand in the early 1970s, Happy was captured as a young calf and first landed at a Florida petting zoo, where she and six other elephants were named after Snow White characters. By 1977, Happy and one other lady of the pack, Grumpy, were new New Yorkers. Though gone, Happy will never be forgotten, and not just by her own well-memoried species. In 2005, Happy became the first recorded elephant to pass a mirror self-recognition test. The extraordinary act of self-awareness later became the central issue of a unique legal case wherein an animal rights group, the Nonhuman Rights Project, filed a habeas corpus petition on Happy’s behalf, arguing that a living being of such intelligence had the right to bodily liberty. The claim was rejected, but not unanimously, possibly paving the way for future elephant generations to enjoy more freedoms than Happy saw during her remarkable lifetime.
“Following ongoing assessments of her condition and quality of life, this difficult decision was made when it became clear that her age-related conditions had progressed,” Craig Piper, the zoo’s interim director, said in a statement.
Nearly four years ago, New York’s highest court rejected, by a 5-to-2 vote, an animal-advocacy organization’s argument that Happy was being illegally detained at the zoo and should be transferred to an elephant sanctuary.
The ruling ended what appeared to be the first case of its kind in the English-speaking world to reach so high a court.
The organization behind the case, the Nonhuman Rights Project, had argued that the bedrock legal principle of habeas corpus, which people assert to protect their bodily liberty and to contest illegal confinement, should be extended to autonomous, cognitively complex animals like elephants.
The group, which had failed to win freedom for two chimpanzees under the same concept, took Happy as its cause in 2018, after she distinguished herself as especially cognitively advanced even for a species known for intelligence.
In 2005, she passed a mirror self-recognition test, touching an X marked on her head with her trunk while looking in a mirror, making her the first elephant to show such a degree of self-awareness. (Only human infants, apes and dolphins had done it before.)
Christopher Berry, the Nonhuman Rights Project’s executive director, said in a statement on Thursday that the elephant’s “suffering” would “not be in vain.”
“Happy will always be remembered as the elephant who opened the courtroom doors for legal rights for animals,” Mr. Berry said. “Two judges from the New York Court of Appeals issued powerful dissenting opinions in support of her right to liberty.”
…Judge Rowan D. Wilson, who now leads the court, said in a lengthy dissent that he and his colleagues had a duty “to recognize Happy’s right to petition for her liberty not just because she is a wild animal who is not meant to be caged and displayed, but because the rights we confer on others define who we are as a society.”
The Bronx Zoo described Happy’s passing as peaceful, and noted that she was surrounded by caretakers who had been with her for 30+ years. I’m sure that was some comfort for Happy, but she needed more elephants in her pack, not humans. When Happy and Grumpy arrived at the zoo, they were still young and kept under the tutelage of an older female elephant named Tus. Once Tus passed, Happy and Grumpy were integrated with two adult elephants named Patty and Maxine (the names are perfection, no notes), where not long after Patty and Maxine fatally attacked Grumpy! And somehow the solution was to keep Happy separated from the deadly duo by a fence, mostly alone. Not good enough! I’m sure the individuals at the zoo who looked after Happy took the best care of her and loved her with all their hearts. But this was not a setting in which Happy could thrive. She even went missing for months in 2024 when she was on strike from going outside, and the zoo said “She’s fine, this is her choice!” My trunk snorts heavily at that explanation.
May Happy’s memory be a blessing — and a reminder to do better by these gorgeous creatures.
PS — “The rights we confer on others define who we are as a society.” Well that’s a damning indictment of today’s society.
Photo note by CB: These are stock photos of elephants. Apologies for not having a photo of Happy. You can see her in the NY Times article quoted above and at this link.
Photos credit: Jay Brand and Armin Forster on Pexels