The zoo likes to claim that the elephants there form a “herd”. Herds are the family units that elephants form in the wild, led by a matriarch with her calves and grand calves. Male elephants move away from the herd as they mature into a young adult and become independent.

There are 5 elephants at the zoo right now — two males (Samson and Samudra), and three females (Shine, Rose-Tu and Chendra).

The zoo likes to show the elephants as a tight unit, looking out for each other, with the elephant du jour acting as the “aunt”. Samson is portrayed as an easy-going, chill elephant with some nice prose and a slickly edited video.

Zoo visitors, spending a few minutes looking at the elephants, may not notice anything out of the ordinary. But medical records tell the truth.

The fact is — they don’t get along. A while back, Samson bit off Shine’s tail, amputating it. Here is the incident as recorded by their keeper:

And Chendra was bullied by Shine, when she got pushed against a metal feeder, injuring her face. Chendra is food-motivated, so she mostly stands close to the feeders, hoping to get the occasional morsel. Maybe Shine didn’t like this, and Chendra being the lone Borneo elephant (a smaller subspecies), she gets bullied easily.

Such problems are not known to occur at sanctuaries, where each elephant has several sources of enrichment to keep busy and enough space to not get on each other’s nerves.