Since 1977, Happy the elephant has lived in a one-acre exhibit at the Bronx Zoo. But a New York state court ruling has halted a year-long legal effort to address the elephant in the room – whether Happy is, well, happy.
. Then 34 years old, Happy gazed into an 8-by-8-foot mirror and repeatedly used her trunk to touch an"X" painted above her eye.
"As a graduate student, I studied Happy's ability to recognize herself in a mirror 17 years ago, and am grateful for the attention the work has brought to elephant welfare and conservation efforts,", now an assistant professor of psychology and elephant behavior researcher at CUNY's Hunter College, told Insider.
"I think it is crucially important, whenever considering the welfare of elephants living in captivity, that the individual elephant – her personality, her experiences, her relationships with other elephants and with the humans that care for her – must be considered paramount," Plotnik added. While he has not worked with Happy since then and now spends much of his time studying wild elephants in Thailand, he added that he has"always felt that this was a very difficult legal case, for both the elephant and the humans involved"., Judge Jenny Rivera said that Happy"is an autonomous, if not physically free, being. The law has a mechanism to challenge this inherently harmful confinement".
"A gilded cage is still a cage," Rivera added."Happy may be a dignified creature, but there is nothing dignified about her captivity."