It's no longer a (traditional) zoo out there

For Wanda and Winky, this fall will bring a new home, warmer weather, and spacious grounds. For visitors to the Detroit Zoo, it will mean the loss of a big - several wrinkled tons, actually - attraction.

The zoo's recent announcement that it won't keep its aging Asian elephants because it can't give them the space, companionship, and climate they need has caused more than a few ripples in Detroit - and the zoo community nationwide. After all, a zoo without elephants?

But in a world in which goldfish have their own vets, horses get spa treatments, and a number of communities have espoused pet "guardianship," the Detroit Zoo's decision is one more sign of humans' changing relationship with animals.

Zoos nowadays are as apt to evoke sympathy for the caged creatures as curiosity. People are both more aware of animals' needs - emotional and physical - and less willing to tolerate abuse. Between vocal animal rights campaigns and hit films like "Free Willy" and "Finding Nemo," a fundamental shift is taking place in public consciousness: Animals are being treated, essentially, more like humans. "It's like we're waking up from a deep cultural sleep," says Tom Regan, an animal rights ethicist and author of "Empty Cages." Animals are somebodies, not somethings. That's what I think we're waking up to."

In some ways, zoos have been responding to a new sensibility for years. Small cages have given way to "habitats." Social animals like apes are housed together. Conservation and education have gotten increased emphasis. More animals are trained with positive reinforcement rather than punishment, and many zoos keep intelligent animals engaged by using techniques such as scattering their food so they need to work to find it.

Art Carlson, a white-haired visitor at Chicago's Lincoln Park Zoo, remembers the first time he came to the grounds in 1938. "They used to have the poor lions and tigers in cages," he says, watching the zoo's three elephants. "They'd pace back and forth. As a kid, I felt sorry for them. The animals never have enough space, but at least now they're not in a cage."

Even against that changing backdrop, Detroit's elephant decision was a zoolological zinger. Yet it won't be the first zoo to lose its largest pachyderms. Lulu and Tinkerbelle, San Francisco's resident giants, will also be heading to leafier pastures this summer - a decision sparked by public outrage over the death of two elephants this spring. Controversies have had similar results elsewhere.

But Detroit may be the first to get rid of such a popular animal for purely ethical reasons. "It was really a natural progression of our effort to create a new, expanded environment for elephants," says zoo director Ron Kagan. "And it was the realization that nothing we could do could mitigate the severity of the winters, or the reality that elephants live in large groups, and don't breed well in captivity no matter where they are. It became a realization that improving things for elephants really meant not having them."

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