Zurich Zoo euthanises 49-year-old elephant

The pachyderm had been suffering from health problems for a long time.

The elephant named Ceyla-Himali was no longer able to stand up on her own on Saturday morning, Zurich Zoo said on Monday. Following a further assessment, it was decided to euthanise the elephant for animal welfare reasons.

+Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox

With Ceyla-Himali, who comes from an elephant orphanage in Sri Lanka, Zurich Zoo has lost its oldest elephant. Barely a year old, she was flown to Switzerland in March 1976. She gave birth to six calves and helped raise many others.

The elephant turned 49 on July 1, a venerable age for an Asian elephant. In recent years, Ceyla-Himali had been suffering increasingly from age-related problems. Her kidneys, in particular, were no longer functioning optimally.

After Ceyla-Himali’s death, her two offspring Panang (35) and Farha (19) will continue to live in the elephant park. The zoo hopes that they will reproduce with the male elephant Thai.

Adapted from French by DeepL/ac

How we work

This news story has been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team. At SWI swissinfo.ch we select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate it into English. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles.

If you want to know more about how we work, have a look here, if you want to learn more about how we use technology, click here, and if you have feedback on this news story please write to [e-mail].