Savanna, Tasha, Angeline, Victoria, and Zuri

There are five female African elephants held in captivity in the Pittsburgh Zoo:

Savanna

Savanna, also known as Nan, is a female African elephant who was born around 1983 in an unknown location in Africa. She was imported to the US in 1986 in the custody of a notorious elephant trainer named Allen Campbell. Campbell is best known for having been killed by an elephant named Tyke after she escaped from a Honolulu stadium following years of abuse and exploitation in a traveling circus. The same year she was imported to the US, Savanna was transferred to Arthur Jones’ “Jumbolair” in Florida. 

The inventor of Nautilus exercise equipment and a purported animal lover, Jones imported 63 baby elephants onto his property from Zimbabwe on a Boeing 707 in the mid-80s (elephants were among the many wild animals he confined on his property). He did so in what he stated was an effort to save them from culling by the Zimbabwean government, which NJ.com’s project and investigations team described as a “delusion of grandeur.” 

According to Dale Tuttle, a prior director of Springfield Zoo, ten elephants died at the Jumbolair between 1984 and 1987 from transport stress, wounds, and diseases. Most of the elephants were sold to zoos and circuses across the US and Mexico. Savanna was sold to the Miami Metro Zoo in 1990 when she was around seven. Two years later, she was transferred to the Pittsburgh Zoo, where she remains today. 

The Pittsburgh Zoo has used her extensively in its elephant breeding efforts. In 1998, she gave birth to a stillborn calf whose father is unknown. Two years later, she gave birth to a male calf named Callee whose father is Jackson. When Callee was ten, the Pittsburgh Zoo transferred him to another zoo. In 2008, Savanna gave birth to Angeline. 

A photo taken by Molly Condit for the NhRP in the summer of 2025 shows Savanna and Tasha reaching out to touch trunks through the bars that separate their stalls in the zoo’s elephant barn. A now publicly unavailable documentary film viewed by the NhRP, Elefamilia, celebrates breeding at the Pittsburgh Zoo and shows Savanna in chains following Angeline’s birth. A bullhook is used on Savanna and thrown at her during and after the birth. 

Tasha

Natasha, also known as Tasha, is a female African elephant who was born around 1976 in South Africa. She was captured in 1978 under unknown circumstances and imported to the US in 1979. Where she spent the first two years of her life in the US is unknown. She’s been confined in the Pittsburgh Zoo since 1982. It’s unclear whether the zoo has ever attempted to use Tasha for captive breeding. 

Angeline

Angeline is a female African elephant who was born on July 9, 2008 at the Pittsburgh Zoo as part of the zoo’s captive breeding program. Her mother is Savanna and her father is Jackson, also known as Jack, a male elephant confined in the Pittsburgh Zoo’s breeding facility in Fairhope (now called the International Conservation Center, it was previously known as the Fairhope Conservation Center). Angeline has a half-sister named Victoria.

A video recorded by the NhRP in the summer of 2025 shows Angeline chewing on the chains that line a stall in the zoo’s elephant barn. 

Victoria

Victoria is a female African elephant who was born on September 12, 1999 in the Pittsburgh Zoo as part of the zoo’s captive breeding program. Her mother is Moja, an elephant previously held captive in the Pittsburgh Zoo. Her father is Jackson. Her sister is Zuri. Victoria is Angeline’s half-sister. Victoria and Zuri have eight living siblings who are held captive in AZA-accredited zoos in Pennsylvania, Florida, Missouri, and Kansas. 

When Victoria was three, her mother was walking through the Pittsburgh Zoo elephant exhibit with her at the prompting of a handler with a bullhook. According to one news report, he “urged [Moja] to move along, and the elephant butted him and pinned him to the ground with her head, crushing him.” In 2014, when Victoria was an adolescent, the Pittsburgh Zoo transferred Moja to an AZA-accredited zoo in Oregon where she remains today. 

On October 15, 2025, the Pittsburgh Zoo announced that Victoria and Zuri would soon be moved to its breeding center.  

Zuri

Zuri is a female African elephant who was born on July 25, 2008 in the Pittsburgh Zoo as part of the zoo’s captive breeding program. Her mother is Moja. Her father is Jackson. The aforementioned film Elefamilia shows Moja soon after Zuri’s birth, reaching out to her baby through the bars that separate them as Zuri stands alone in a cell. Another image shows several elephants vocalizing and reaching out to Angeline through the bars that separate them after Angeline’s birth.

On October 15, 2025, the Pittsburgh Zoo announced that Victoria and Zuri would soon be moved to its breeding center.

About the Pittsburgh Zoo and the elephant exhibit

The Pittsburgh Zoo & Aquarium is a 77-acre facility in Pittsburgh that exhibits more than 8,000 animals representing over 600 species. The zoo is incorporated as the Zoological Society of Pittsburgh and is a wholly private 501(c)(3) entity. It began holding elephants in captivity in 1928. 

The Pittsburgh Zoo stands out among US zoos for how long it has used dominance-based elephant management techniques. For example, it used bullhooks on the elephants until the Pittsburgh City Council passed a bullhook ban in 2017. A bullhook is a tool used to control elephants through pain and the fear of pain. In 2014, the USDA cited the Pittsburgh Zoo for using dogs to “nip and charge” the elephants. A year later, the zoo gave up its accreditation by the Association of Zoos & Aquariums (AZA) rather than comply with new safety standards that would prevent handlers from physically interacting with the elephants. Only in 2024 did the Pittsburgh Zoo regain its accreditation after finally agreeing to the new AZA standards. 

The zoo actively breeds elephants as part of the AZA’s “Species Survival Plan Program.” Like virtually all zoos accredited by AZA, the Pittsburgh Zoo has a history of forcibly separating elephants, including closely bonded ones.

The most recent elephant death at the zoo was in 2017, when an 11-year-old male elephant named Thabo-Umasai was euthanized because of what the zoo stated was arthritic autoimmune disease.

According to the zoo’s most recent Captive Bred Wildlife Registration submitted to the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the zoo’s elephant exhibits o a 13,500-square-foot barn (called “The Elephant Care Center) which is 130’ by 70’ and a .75 acre outside exhibit yard that has a water feature. The barn is divided into two stalls (30’ x 22’ and 19’ x 25,’ respectively), a “family room” (26’ x 25’), a “bull barn” (34’ x 33’), and a “day stall” (65’ x 45’). Select stalls can be viewed by the public through Plexiglass barriers. There is an outdoor bull pen (40’ x 65’) and an elephant restraining device for medical treatment and semen sampling collection. The barn is constructed of cement block with poured concrete floors.

The zoo describes the outdoor exhibit yard as being .75 acres. It is adjacent to the giraffe exhibit. 

The Pittsburgh Zoo has been included on In Defense of Animals’ list of “10 Worst Zoos for Elephants in North America” in 2016, 2017, 2019, and 2020. In early 2025, a Pittsburgh-based national animal advocacy group called the Christian Animal Rights Association created a Change.org petition urging the director of the Pittsburgh Zoo to release the elephants to a sanctuary. It currently has over 13,000 signatures.