Being essentially imprisoned for decades takes its toll.
Happy’s existence (I hesitate to call it a “life”) in the Bronx Zoo reflects her dismal surroundings. Happy no longer appears interested in living, and I can’t blame her.
The pain of osteoarthritis (a common ailment in captive elephants who are confined on hard substrates and cannot exercise properly) is debilitating. Chronic lack of autonomy and the ability to live freely and make choices for oneself robs one of a sense of agency, making life purposeless. Lack of social interaction with conspecifics, which is essential for socially sophisticated animals like elephants, further deprives Happy of a meaningful existence.
Happy appears to have now retreated into her prison-like barn, no longer interested in the outside world. She is an individual who has suffered a lifetime in captivity, on display for human “entertainment,” robbed of her “personhood.” And yet, the zoo claims she is simply “choosing” to spend time in the barn.
She’s never really had a choice or a chance. Now, she has withdrawn from the outside world, from life itself, declining in a depressing cell. Happy is now an individual who is anything but what her name implies.
