50-Year-Old Elephant Dies at the San Diego Zoo

A 50-year-old male Asian elephant died at the San Diego Zoo on Tuesday after years of age-related health issues.

Staff members saw that Ranchipur’s condition had worsened on Tuesday as he leaned on a structure for support and remained unresponsive to medical treatment. Zoo officials decided to end his suffering with euthanasia.

Ranchipur came to the San Diego Zoo Safari Park in 1981 and moved to the zoo itself in 2009 with the opening of a new habitat there. Zoo officials said in a statement that he was “easy to spot, with huge tusks approximately 6 to 6.5 feet long that weighed an estimated 100 pounds each.” Those tusks will be removed and inventoried for security purposes before being “properly disposed of.”

[ABC 10 News]