Don't Miss Raja's Birthday Party Thursday At The Saint Louis Zoo

ST. LOUIS, MO — If you’re looking for something to do while the kids are out of school, a visit to the Saint Louis Zoo might be just the ticket. Thursday, Dec. 27, is National Visit the Zoo Day, and it's also Raja the elephant's 26th birthday.

Born on Dec. 27, 1992, Raja was the first Asian elephant born at the Zoo. He is the father of three female calves – Maliha, Jade and Priya. On Thursday, Raja will receive special presents to stomp open at 11 a.m. at River’s Edge in the Zoo, weather permitting. Visitors are also invited to sing "Happy Birthday" and cheer for Raja.

"We’re very excited to celebrate Raja's birthday," said Martha Fischer, the zoo's curator of mammal and ungulates. "It seems like it was just yesterday when Raja was born and from that day forward he’s been beloved by so many."

For Raja's party, zookeepers and volunteers have constructed birthday presents filled with some of the elephant's favorite things, including cereal, peanuts, bananas and popcorn. Large trees will be provided for the elephants to push over and encourage natural browsing. Other elephants from the family also may be celebrating with treats of their own in River's Edge.

From 10:30 to 11 a.m., zookeepers will provide keeper chats and animal training demonstrations at the elephant habitats, and after the celebration, visitors can sign a super-sized birthday card and learn more about the elephants and elephant conservation through keeper chats, activities and biofacts until 1 p.m. at Lakeside Cafe. Birthday cupcakes and hot chocolate will be available for purchase.

Zoo exhibits have changed significantly over the years. Before the 20th century, animals were often kept in cages with bars that left them very little room to move around, let alone explore their surroundings. In today's zoos, enrichment activities — things the animals enjoy doing and that demonstrate their species-specific behavior — are viewed as essential to animals' welfare as proper nutrition and veterinary care.

(What's your favorite exhibit at the Saint Louis Zoo? Tell us what you think in the comments.)

Zoo animals' habitats have expanded, too. The movement to house animals more natural spaces began in the early 1900s when Carl Hagenbeck, whose family was involved in the wild animal trade, created "Tierpark" in Stellingen, Germany.

Gone were the bars and cages and in their place were moats to separate some of the animal groups, according to Smithsonian Library blog written by Polly Lasker. Hagenbeck encouraged trainers to treat the animals kindly and use gentle coaxing rather than some of the harsher methods that were typical at the time.

"What is now taken for granted by almost every visitor to a zoo — moated exhibits in a landscape simulating nature; gregarious animals of mixed species kept in herds in large enclosures; and animal performances based on conditioning and sensitivity, not on brute force and intimidation — all started at Hagenbeck's Tierpark," Herman Reichenbach wrote in "New worlds, new animals: from menagerie to zoological park in the nineteenth century."

Learn more about Raja and the Saint Louis Zoo here.

Photo by J. Ryne Danielson/Patch