Kate the elephant, Blackpool Zoo’s oldest resident, turns 56 years old

Kate the elephant, Blackpool Zoo’s oldest resident, turns 56 years old today. Since her arrival at the zoo in 1972, Kate has lived through three generations of elephant care, to which she has both contributed to and also been the beneficiary of. Despite outlasting many a career of those who have cared for her throughout her time at Blackpool, her welfare has always remained paramount and significant advancements in care since the 1970s have been testament to her life at Blackpool; no more so than her move to the state-of-the-art care facility, Project Elephant Base Camp in 2017.

Elephants are highly intelligent and complex animals, each one an individual with specific needs. Kate is no exception, and all of her needs are tended to by our dedicated keeping team. Receiving regular health checks from our vet and animal health teams, pedicures, skincare regimes, behavioural monitoring, sleep monitoring, body condition and locomotion assessment to name just a few - we are privileged to provide the care Kate deserves to meet her needs.

Modern research continues to reveal more about the complexities of elephants that provides us with the knowledge in which to make informed decisions, relating to progressive elephant care. A now well understood topic, is that of the social complexity of the species in the wild.

As one of the oldest elephants in the UK, Kate’s social history and experience has been very different to the younger generation of her species, such as Esha for example. Esha was born in 2014 and she resides here with her mother Noorjahan, having grown up under her guidance and that of other herd members, Tara and Minbu. Since 2018 and the arrival of the four females from Twycross Zoo, the elephant care team have worked exceptionally hard to integrate the two generations - something that is often a challenge when caring for geriatric elephants. This is something that has proved successful at Blackpool thus far and can be attributed to ‘striking a balance’ between Kate’s specific needs and those of the breeding herd; this is a testament to the knowledge and understanding of our expert keeping team.

Today, Kate is doing exceptionally well at 56 years old and she has certainly developed close relationships with several individuals, especially Esha and Minbu of whom she can regularly be seen interacting with, when she’s not taking a well-earned break from the herd that is!