'Happy' the elephant goes to the Supreme Court to claim her personhood

'Happy' the elephant’s lawyers will appear in court on May 18 to try to establish her legal personhood. According to her legal team, their trunked client is being detained by the Bronx Zoo “illegally” and her rights as a person establish that she must be released immediately. 

“The elephant is being imprisoned against her will,” Steve​n Wise, Happy’s lawyer from the Nonhuman Rights Project (NRP) told the Wall Street Journal.  “For more than 40 years, she has been kept as a prisoner.”

The female Asian elephant was born in the wild in 1971 in Thailand. She was brought to the United States and sold for $800 to the Lion Country Safari, along with six other baby elephants, all named after the dwarves from Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, according to the NRP website.  In 1977, the six elephants were relocated to circuses and zoos around the nation. Happy and Grumpy were sent to the Bronx Zoo. 

In 2005, Happy became the first elephant ever to pass: the mirror self-recognition test, which allegedly shows whether an animal has self-awareness. 

Happy’s case will be presented before New York’s Supreme Court to be given legal personhood that would give her the “fundamental right to bodily liberty,” according to NRP. 

“Active more than 20 hours each day, elephants move many miles across landscapes to locate resources to maintain their large bodies, to connect with friends and to search for mates. Elephants have evolved to move. Holding them captive and confined prevents them from engaging in normal, autonomous behavior and can result in the development of arthritis, osteoarthritis, osteomyelitis, boredom and stereotypical behavior,” elephant expert Joyce Poole wrote in a supplemental affidavit.

“Held in isolation elephants become bored, depressed, aggressive, catatonic and fail to thrive. Human caregivers are no substitute for the numerous, complex social relationships and the rich gestural and vocal communication exchanges that occur between free-living elephants,” she continued. 

Happy’s case will mark the first time that a U.S. court hears oral arguments about an elephant’s legal personhood. The Atlantic even called the case “the most important animal-rights case of the 21st Century.”