Jambo, Kimba, LouLou, Lucky, and Missy

Jambo, Kimba, LouLou, Lucky, and Missy are five wild-born female African elephants imprisoned in the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo in Colorado.

Jambo is approximately 40 years old. She was captured from her natural habitat under unknown circumstances and from an unknown location and imported to the US in 1985. For 24 years, from 1986 to 2011, Jambo–then known as Dumbo–was owned by Joe Frisco and forced to perform in a traveling circus called the Terry Frisco Elephant Act. During this time of her life, Jambo would have been controlled with a painful tool called a bullhook as are elephants still used in circuses today. The Frisco family includes several generations of elephant and exotic animal handlers and has faced numerous allegations of elephant abuse, including Joe’s brother Tim allegedly training a new employee to beat elephants. “What spectators see in the shows is simply an extension of what the elephants do on their own, just glammed up,” Joe Frisco once told a reporter.

In 2010, Jambo killed a groomer between the morning and evening shows at a circus event in Wilkes-Barre, PA. While there were no witnesses to what happened, the chairman of the circus told local media he believed Jambo, “in an attempt to protect [the groomer from the sparking wires, grabbed him and moved him away.” Other reports indicated Jambo was startled and possibly shocked by the wires and subsequently stomped the groomer. Elephant cognition and behavior expert Dr. Joyce Poole and the animal advocacy organization In Defense of Animals submitted a letter to the county coroner challenging his assessment that the death was accidental, citing elephants’ intentionality not with the objective of faulting Jambo but to underscore the stresses of captivity, which can sometimes lead to fatal attacks on humans. A year later, the Terry Frisco Elephant Act transferred Jambo to the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo.

Kimba was born in 1977 in Kruger National Park in South Africa and is approximately 46 years old. Captured and imported to the US in 1980 when she was three, she spent her first year at the still operational International Animal Exchange in Michigan, which assists zoos and governments with animal acquisition and transport. From there, she was transferred to the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo along with Lucky. According to the zoo she is prone to colic.

LouLou (formerly known as Kimba Lou) is approximately 41 years old. She was captured from an unknown location in Kenya and imported to the US in 1984 via an exotic animal dealer in Lampasas, Texas called J.C. Schulz, Inc. (the Schulz family runs the still-operational Kifaru Exotic Animal Auction in Texas). The Jacksonville Zoo and Gardens purchased Lou Lou in 1984. In 2006, when she was 24 years old, she was transferred to the Lee Richardson Zoo in Garden City, Kansas as part of an Association of Zoos & Aquariums (AZA) breeding arrangement. In 2015, she was transferred to the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo along with Missy.

Lucky is approximately 43 years old. She was born in Kruger National Park in South Africa and captured and imported to the US in 1981 when she was one. Along with Kimba, she began her imprisonment in the US at the International Animal Exchange. That same year, Lucky and Kimba were transferred to the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo. She receives injections for arthritis.

Missy is approximately 54 years old. She was captured from an unknown location in Africa in 1971 when she was approximately two years old and imported to the US in 1976. She spent several months at the no-longer-operational Largo Wild Life Preserve in Largo, Maryland. She was then transferred to the Jacksonville Zoo and Gardens in Jacksonville, Florida. In 2006, when Missy was 36 years old, she was transferred to the Lee Richardson Zoo in Garden City, Kansas as part of an Association of Zoos & Aquariums (AZA) breeding arrangement. In 2015, she was transferred to the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo along with Lou Lou. She is blind in her left eye and receives injections for arthritis. She is the oldest elephant at the zoo. 

About the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo elephant exhibit

The Cheyenne Mountain Zoo is a privately owned zoo located southwest of Colorado Springs, Colorado. The zoo was built on a mountainside and sits at 6,714 feet above sea level. It is surrounded by housing developments and a golf course. 

The new elephant exhibit, known as the Wilgruen Elephant Center, opened in 2013 and was part of a $13.5 million renovation of the larger Encounter Africa exhibit. According to the zoo, it was ostensibly designed to provide support to aging female African elephants. It consists of three exhibit yards that comprise less than an acre and prevent the elephants from walking more than 100 yards in any direction, a two-acre “vacation yard” the elephants are allowed to use several times a month only during the summer, a metal barn divided into stalls, and a quarter-mile walking path. The exhibit yards contain several boulders embedded into the ground and an artificial waterfall. “We hope that seeing animals in an exquisite space will allow guests to make emotional connections, and that those connections will inspire them to help protect animals in the wild,” said the zoo’s CEO and president Bob Chastain of the renovation. 

The zoo groups the elephants and rotates them from yard to yard based on who they get along with. “Because the six ladies arrived at different times and came from different environments and social groups, keepers divvy them into clusters that make them feel most comfortable,” writes the Colorado Springs Gazette. 

The elephants appear to spend at least half of each day in the barn standing on a rubberized concrete surface. On cold days, they’re kept in the barn all day. 

For health and enrichment, the zoo provides the elephants with sand piles and uses a “target stick” to prompt the elephants to contort into unnatural positions which they (and other zoos) refer to as elephant yoga and considers physical therapy. They encourage the elephants to “paint” while on display (“all six female African elephants at Cheyenne Mountain Zoo are artists”), and the zoo their paintings to support their operations. Members of the public can hand-feed the elephants and observe twice-daily demonstrations of training and health inspection.

Following the renovation of the exhibit, the zoo began referring to the elephants as “the Golden Girls” in reference to the famous sitcom. However, Jambo, Kimba, LouLou, Lucky, and Missy are not yet elderly compared to the natural lifespans of elephants who live freely in their natural habitats. 

Stereotypic behavior indicative of stress and trauma have been observed in the elephants, including rocking, swaying, and head bobbing. On a site visit, NhRP affiant Dr. Bob Jacobs observed that the elephants ceased the stereotypic behavior only if they were being fed, were interacting with other elephants, or participating in a training session.

The most recent elephant death in the zoo was in May of 2023, when a wild-born female African elephant named Malaika was euthanized at 37 years old following years of chronic health and mobility issues including bowing in her back. For two decades she was used in the entertainment industry. There have been no elephant births at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo.