Elephant Evades COVID-19 to Find Sanctuary After Years in Circuses and Zoos


There are signs that the six-ton elephant, thought to be 55, remembers her decades as a circus performer and years as a zoo curiosity. Now, after a border crossing from Argentina that was nearly scrubbed over coronavirus fears, she has the run of an animal sanctuary in Brazil's midwestern Mato Grosso state.


Mara elephant
Former captive Asian elephant Mara (right) got her first look at a pond at the Elephant Sanctuary Brazil in Chapada dos Guimarães, Brazil on May 22. She lives there after 50 years in circuses and an Argentine zoo. Global Sanctuary for Elephants

"She started to accept us," Gribaudo says. "We asked [her trainer] if we could help to feed her, to bathe her. We would spend nearly three months playing with her every day."


Elephants are known for their acute memories; he's convinced she recognized him both times.

Mara Elephant 2
Mara is pictured on May 14, 2020 rubbing against a tree trunk in an enclosure at Elephant Sanctuary Brazil in Chapada dos Guimarães, Brazil. She had arrived from Argentina less than 24 hours earlier. Global Sanctuary for Elephants



She was born captive in India, in what "was probably a logging camp, since tourism wasn't that popular at the time," said Scott Blais, who runs the sanctuary and another like it in Tennessee with his wife Katherine. By 1970, at age 5, Mara was on display at the Tierpark Hagenbeck zoo in Hamburg, Germany.


Cesar Gribaudo with Mara
Cesar Gribaudo posed for this snapshot with Mara when she was a juvenile, in front of the building where he lived in the Buenos Aires, Argentina, suburb of San Isidro, in October 1973. Cesar Gribaudo

Brazil banned circus animal acts in 1995. More than 30 countries have national regulations or laws that ban animals in circuses, according to the nonprofit advocacy group Animal Defenders International.

The cramped urban zoo where Mara lived closed to the public in 2016. Officials are still trying to find homes for 1,500 animals while they turn the land into a public park.

The tractor-trailer that jostled and tossed Mara last month sat low to the ground for stability as it lumbered through the Brazilian highlands. Inside she was safe, but she was still an aged pachyderm in poor health. Blais cared for her for two days on the road and several more beforehand, acclimating Mara to the ventilated stainless steel crate that would temporarily shrink her world.

Getting the gigantic box on the truck with her inside was a three-hour engineering exercise, complete with an anchored construction crane.

Another crane awaited at journey's end in the town of Chapada dos Guimarães, which sits on an expansive mesa of red sandstone with dramatic slopes. Red dust is everywhere, and Mara picks some up with her trunk and tosses it onto her back between squeals.

Cesar Gribaudo with brother
Cesar Gribaudo, left, and his little brother Fabio posed while riding on the back of baby elephant Mara in front of the building where they lived in the Buenos Aires, Argentina, suburb of San Isidro, in October 1973. Cesar Gribaudo

Blais says she arrived on May 13 displaying tics that animal behaviorists associate with trauma, and then quickly shed the pain. "She was swaying her head almost all the time," he says, "a habitual pattern developed for decades. And within two weeks it was essentially gone."

Physical signs of abuse remain. Scar tissue on the left side of her giant face—on her cheek and above her eye—are what's left of abscesses from long ago. Her front right leg is contorted from an old injury.

Yet she's quickly adjusting to an elephant's equivalent of a retirement home. Elephants have roughly the same life span as humans, so Mara could live another 15 years or more.

About 80 percent of her diet is wild-foraged food. Caretakers add hay and grains, and reward her with fruit during medical checkups. She lopes and grazes in what seems like slow motion, eating and digesting between 300 and 400 pounds of food per day. Three other rescued senior citizens keep her company, playing in streams and ponds in a climate that's similar to her native India's.

Blais says when Rana, a 60-year-old female elephant, met Mara, she "was incredibly vocal—a lot of bellowing, rumbling, signs of excitement and enthusiasm. They are inseparable."

Mara and Rana
Asian elephant Mara, left, touches Rana's head with her trunk in their enclosure at Elephant Sanctuary Brazil in Chapada dos Guimarães, Brazil, on May 16. Global Sanctuary for Elephants

Katherine Blais says Rana "is acting like an older sister" while they roam the sanctuary's 2,800 acres. "While Mara reacts to birds and tapirs, Rana leads the way and protects her."

Animal protection groups in dozens of countries have campaigned to strip circuses of their animal acts. Some would also shutter zoos. In the United States those groups have so far failed to find their holy grail: a judge who will rule that an animal is a "person" with legal rights.

Brazil appeared to tiptoe close to that standard last year, when a judge ruled that state authorities can't levy a tax of 50,000 Reals (about $9,500) on Elephant Sanctuary Brazil after it took in an elephant named Ramba. Brazilian law allows officials to demand a value added tax on the movement of goods.

Ramba died on December 26, 2019, just two months after arriving. But Blais' lawyers successfully argued in court that the tax law didn't apply—because the elephant wasn't a "thing."

This story was provided to Newsweek by Zenger News.