Maggie the elephant prompts big debate

At 9,120 pounds, Maggie the elephant could stand to lose a little weight. "Elephants are just like people. They will be as lazy as they can be and still eat," said Tex Edwards, the director of the Alaska Zoo, Maggie's home for the past 22 years. To help the pudgy pachyderm get in shape, the zoo has planned a special exercise program for Maggie. She won't be taking aerobics classes, but that idea isn't too far off. "We hope to be the first zoo in the world with an elephant treadmill," Edwards told USA Today.

Edwards hopes the $100,000 exercise machine will be completed by this summer. It will be 20 feet long and 5 feet wide, with a conveyor belt big enough for, well, an elephant.

Animal rights advocates say the last thing Maggie needs is a treadmill. They say she needs to be in an animal sanctuary where she'll be far away from Alaska's harsh winters and have room to roam. For more than a year, activists have staged protests to have Maggie moved, but Alaska Zoo officials say she's staying put.

The mayhem over Maggie and other elephants in captivity has let a bigger animal out of the cage: Are zoos good or bad?

'Modern Arks'

If it weren't for zoos, scientists would know very little about elephants like Maggie, says San Antonio Zoo executive director Steve McCusker. He says that most knowledge of elephant reproduction, nutrition, and behavior has come from research done at zoos.

Vicki Constantine Croke, author of The Modern Ark, a book about the history of zoos, agrees. "Biologists working in the wild ... have zoos to thank for identifying precise drugs and dosages required to anesthetize their subjects. And field researchers have analyzed paw prints from zoo jaguars to help them read the tracks ... of wild cats in the forest," she wrote in the Boston Globe.

Croke contends that as humans enroach on animals' natural habitats, zoos will serve as "modern arks" protecting species from extinction. "Zoos are saving animals whose numbers are dwindling," she wrote.

In addition, Croke says, zoos educate visitors about animals they might never get to see in person. "Zoos connect us with nature in a way that films never can."

'Pitiful Prisons'

Critics counter that the idea of zoos as educational institutions is obsolete. "In the old days, when you didn't have television, children would see animals for the first time at the zoo, and it had an educational component. Now the zoos claim they're preserving the disappearing species, preserving embryos and genetic material. But you don't need to do that in a zoo," animal behaviorist Nicholas Dodman told MSNBC.

The animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals describes zoos as "pitiful prisons" that teach people that it is acceptable to keep animals "in captivity, bored, cramped, lonely,... and far from their natural homes."

The organization says there are better ways to help save endangered animals than confining them in zoos. Its Web site states, "Ultimately, we will only save endangered species by preserving their habitats and combating the reasons why they are killed by people."

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