World Elephant Day is celebrated on August 12. The idea of ​​celebrating World Elephant Day belongs to Canadian filmmakers Patricia Sims and Michael Clarke of Canazwest Pictures and Sivaporn Dardarananda, secretary general of the Thai Elephant Reintroduction Foundation. The first official celebration took place in 2012 under the leadership of Patricia Sims. On this occasion, the film "Return to the Forest", directed by Sims and Clark, was presented, which tells about the reintroduction of Asian elephants into their natural habitat in Thailand.

The purpose of the holiday is to draw public attention to the problem of extermination of elephants. Both African and Asian elephants are listed in the International Red List as species close to extinction. The main reasons for the decline in the number of elephants are: deforestation, hunting them by humans for tusks and meat, persecution due to the damage that elephants cause to crops.

Today is a good reason to talk about the elephants of Mykolaiv Zoo.

We have two Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) – Dinkar (14 years old) and Shanti (16 years old), who arrived in 2019 from Hungary. The animals were transferred under the European Endangered Species Programme.

In honor of today's holiday, employees of the department of ecological and educational work, together with young zoo biologists, conducted a thematic excursion dedicated to this environmental action. Despite the difficult times that our country is going through today, there were many visitors on the tour, not only residents of Mykolaiv, but also guests of our city. Visitors enjoyed listening to interesting information about the history of keeping zoo elephants, viewed archival photos of real giants who lived in the zoo, remembered the very first Asian elephant named Mary, who lived on the old territory of the zoo, and the famous Asian elephant named Karat, which was famous for its long tusks, the length of which was more than 1 meter. Everyone had the opportunity to see with their own eyes a fragment of the tusk of Karat the elephant and even touch it. And then everyone watched the show bathing and feeding of our elephants Dinkar and Shanti.

We offer you to view photos of our giants and happy faces of visitors to Mykolaiv Zoo!!!