FEATURES
FEATURES
Angus
The Seven-ton Elephant Returns Home
By The Ambassadors Research Foundation
Angus, the world's largest elephant in captivity, is due to be returned to the wild after 24 years. He weighs 7347 kilograms, is 3.45 meters tall, and his trunk 2.7 meters long. His daily food intake is about 200 kilograms of hay, grains, fruit, vegetables and sticks, while his daily water intake is about 800 liters. This is in contrast to the average elephant, that weighs 5,000 kilograms with a height of 2.9 meters.
He was 2-years old when captured in South Africa and delivered to a Texas zoo (expected longevity of 55 years). Mr. Michael Hackenberger, an animal nutritionist by training, brought Angus to the 17-hectres Bowmanville Zoo, just east of Toronto, Canada in 1986. In the past 19 years, Angus has been a star. Mr. Hackenberger said, "If it were not for Angus, we would not have survived financially, because he did so much work on films and at fairs." Bowmanville Zoo is Canada's Oldest Private Zoo, established in 1919. We are the original children's zoo and home to many famous Hollywood Celebrity Animal Actors.
Interestingly, Canada's national newspaper, The Globe and Mail, placed Angus on its front-page in 12 February 2005 as part of an article written by Eric Reguly, overshadowing all the other news-making events of the day. Furthermore, the newspaper's Editor-in-chief, Edward Greenspan commented on the story adding Eric's comments about the bull elephant saying, "I am 6 foot 5 inches, Angus is the only carbon-based life form that makes me feel small."
Angus was trained to stand on his hind legs and to take passengers on his back. As a result he became a regular at the Canadian National Exhibition.
Angus is now 5 times heavier than when he was adopted by Bowmanville Zoo. Most of the time Angus is good natured and gentle, except during musth, a period of elevated testosterone levels that makes male elephants temperamental. The musth sometimes lasts for months, which convinced the zoo that its better for him to be released back to his natural habitat.
Dr.
Douw Grobler, the South African wildlife veterinarian, who will help Angus make
the transition back into the wildlife said, "the animals who have been
released back into the wild have done very well. But repatriations have always
been done by ship and it was always young adult females.
The price for a trans-Atlantic trip in a real jumbo jet alone is $325,000. Angus' trainer and co-owner and director of Bowmanville Zoo, Mr. Hackenberger, is convinced that Angus can act and can work for his airfare. He will be the subject of a two-hour documentary repatriation film to be produced by Toronto's Knightscove Family Films, which will feature his life journey from North America to Africa. Furthermore, sponsorship money is being raised to cover the cost of the trip.
Angus is going to Kwandwe, a privately-owned 20,000 hectares game reserve, in the Fish River Valley near Port Elizabeth in South Africa, which includes the rare black rhinoceros.
The world is waiting to watch the film about the journey of the 7-ton bull elephant from Bowmanville, Ontario to Kwandwe game reserve in South Africa.
