In September, we shared the news that the Fresno Chaffee Zoo in California gave the name Davu, meaning “the dawn of a new age,” to one of the elephants born there this year. The second elephant has been named Thando, which means “love.”

Thando’s father Mabu and his mother Nolwazi were both taken from the wild.

Davu’s father is also Mabu. Davu’s mother is Nolwazi’s daughter Amahle.

Amahle was taken from the wild in 2016 when she was around eight years old, with the zoos involved in these importation arrangements wrongly claiming that captivity was for the elephants’ own good and that they would need to be killed if they weren’t brought to US zoos.

These elephants’ lives will be defined not by love, but by loss. The most fundamental loss is the loss of their freedom.

Sharing captive stories is an important first step to freeing them and securing their right to liberty, especially when zoos have so much power and so many resources to control the narrative and try to reassure the public that these births are worthy of celebration rather than condemnation.

Read about the lives of the Fresno Chaffee Zoo elephants on the Nonhuman Rights Project’s Free to be Elephants website, and help raise awareness of their plight by sharing their stories: