Good morning. It’s Friday. Today we’ll look at the life of Happy the Elephant.
Happy the Elephant, a Bronx Zoo mainstay who set herself apart by displaying a surprising level of self-awareness, died on Tuesday. She was 55.
The cause was euthanasia, preceded by a hospice stay because of deteriorating health issues, zoo officials announced late Wednesday.
“She died peacefully surrounded by the keepers, curators and veterinarians who have cared for her, some for more than 30 years,” Craig Piper, the zoo’s interim director, said in a statement. “Their longstanding, deep relationships were invaluable to Happy throughout her life.”
Happy, an Asian elephant, was best known as the central character of a high-profile court case brought in 2018, in which an animal rights advocacy group argued that the elephant was being illegally held at the zoo and should be sent to an animal sanctuary instead. The case advanced all the way to New York’s highest court, where it was shot down in 2022 by a 5-to-2 vote.
The organization behind the case, the Nonhuman Rights Project, had centered its claim on the idea that Happy was entitled to habeas corpus, a legal principle that entitles people to contest illegal confinement. Happy was entitled to such a human privilege, the group argued, because she had exhibited astonishing levels of cognitive ability.
In 2005, Happy aced what’s called a “mirror self-recognition test,” in which she touched an X mark on her forehead with her trunk while gazing into a mirror. She was the first elephant to show such a level of self-awareness — the only other animals who had done so were human babies, apes and dolphins.
Christopher Berry, the Nonhuman Rights Project’s executive director, said in a statement on Thursday that the elephant’s “suffering” would “not be in vain.”
“Happy will always be remembered as the elephant who opened the courtroom doors for legal rights for animals,” Mr. Berry said. “Two judges from the New York Court of Appeals issued powerful dissenting opinions in support of her right to liberty.”
Happy was born in the early 1970s, most likely in Thailand, where she was captured at a young age and brought to the United States, landing first at a Florida petting zoo with six other elephants, each named for “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” characters.
She and another of the seven, Grumpy, also a female, were acquired by the Bronx Zoo, where they lived with an older female, Tus, in the Elephant House. They were trained to do tricks, give rides to children and perform at “Elephant Weekends.”
Eventually, as zoos across the United States revamped or eliminated elephant exhibits, partly in response to a growing animal-rights movement, the three were moved to the zoo’s Wild Asia section, where they joined two other elephants, Patty and Maxine.
Tus died in 2002. Soon after, Patty and Maxine attacked Grumpy, fatally wounding her. Happy could no longer be kept with them. A younger female elephant brought in to be her new companion soon died. From that point onward, Happy was separated from Patty — and, until she died, Maxine — by a fence that divided the zoo’s roughly two-acre, tree-lined elephant enclosure.
To animal-rights activists, the fence was cruel, impeding Happy’s ability to live in a way that was true to her highly social elephantine nature. Zoo officials insisted that Happy was not isolated and that she and Patty touched trunks, smelled each other and communicated.
In announcing Happy’s death, the Wildlife Conservation Society, which operates the Bronx Zoo, reiterated its position that the Nonhuman Rights Project lawsuit was frivolous, noting that it had “always focused on what was best for Happy’s health and psychological well-being.”
Happy is survived by Patty, a 57-year-old Asian elephant who officials said was doing well. Patty is now the sole elephant still on exhibit at the zoo.
Weather
Today will be sunny, with a high near 79. Expect partly cloudy skies tonight and temperatures around 54.
ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING
In effect until June 19 (Juneteenth).
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“They are 85-plus.” — David Von Hollweg, vice president of Rudd Management, which manages about 45 buildings in Manhattan, on tenants who are likely to skip the mailbox and deliver their checks by hand to the company’s office in Midtown East.
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Man Sentenced to 40 Years in Beating Deaths of Homeless Men
A man convicted of killing four homeless men in Chinatown in 2019 was sentenced to 40 years to life in prison on Thursday.
A jury found that Randy Rodriguez Santos, 31, had bludgeoned the men with a 15-pound metal bar as they slept. The men who were killed ranged in age from their late 30s to their 80s.
The judge who sentenced Mr. Santos, Laura A. Ward of State Supreme Court in Manhattan, said that Mr. Santos’s case exemplified the “coming together of three horrible symptoms of this city: homelessness, mental illness and narcotics abuse.”
Mr. Santos’s lawyers had tried to argue that he should not be found guilty because of mental disease or defect. At the time of the murders, Mr. Santos himself appeared to be homeless and was experiencing mental health problems. His lawyers said that he had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and that he heard voices. On the night of the killings, Mr. Santos believed he needed to kill 40 people in order to save his own life.
Just before Justice Ward informed him of his sentence, Mr. Santos addressed the court, saying that he felt “bad about what I did.”
“I wish it never happened,” he said. “My mind is much better now. I feel like a different person now.”
Mr. Santos was 24 at the time of the crimes, having immigrated from the Dominican Republic five years before. In response to Mr. Santos’s lawyers’ claims that he was unaware of what he was doing when he killed the four men, prosecutors argued that he understood his actions and had gone as far as to rehearse them a week before in Chelsea, when he attacked a sleeping man with a stick.
Ahead of his sentencing, Mr. Santos intimated that he was aware he would be incarcerated for some time and that he would put the time to good use by completing his education and learning English.
“I want to be somebody when I get out of the jail,” he said.
METROPOLITAN diary
Near Union Square
Dear Diary:
On a quick visit to New York recently to see some Broadway shows, my wife and I overheard two women talking on the sidewalk as we passed a Paper Source store on Fifth Avenue near Union Square.
“I hear they have some wonderful papaya in there,” one of the women said enthusiastically.
Her companion briefly appeared perplexed but then recovered.
“It’s papyrus,” she said quietly.
— Paul Pavlis
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Tell us your New York story here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
Glad we could get together here. — C.F.
Davaughnia Wilson and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at [email protected].
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Claire Fahy reports on New York City and the surrounding area for The Times.
The post Happy, an Elephant of Distinction appeared first on New York Times.
