Each session lasts between 30 seconds to five minutes
Elephants at the Houston Zoo in the US are taking yoga classes every day to stay healthy and limber. Every single day all members of the herd do multiple training sets during their daily "elephant yoga" sessions as routine health checks.
A 40-year-old elephant named Tess can do a handstand, it can lift her 6,500-pound body on her front two legs. "She's definitely our most flexible," said Kristen Windle, the Houston Zoo's elephant manager, told The Houston Chronicle.
The manager further added, "So this is the time where we see everything about them. We'll get a good look at their skin, we'll check their feet, we'll check their mouth. But we're also looking at their range of motion and how they're moving so we can know exactly what they're feeling by these training sets."
The manager shared that the training starts soon after the elephants are born. "Our training starts day one," Ms Windle told the media outlet. "We're immediately going to ask them to start knowing their name. So, we're going to use their name every time we're going to work on tactile. We want them to be comfortable with us touching them."
Each session lasts between 30 seconds to five minutes. The zoo shared that some older elephants do two sessions a day to keep their joints loose. After the sessions, the elephants are rewarded with special treats, like bananas and slices of bread.
If they don't want to get involved or if they don't want to keep working with it, they can just walk away," Ms Windle said. "There's nothing we can do to stop that but they know they're not getting the bread or the produce."
During the yoga, the elephants lift their front and back feet, balance on two feet and stretch out while laying on the ground. Most of the exercises mimic movements they would make in the wild.
"It's not going to be as posed, but they're constantly climbing, laying down, standing up, throwing stuff on their backs," Windle said. "The things that we're doing are part of natural movements that they do."
Each elephant at the Houston Zoo has their own personalized routine.
A 2-year-old elephant named Teddy is currently learning to identify different parts of his body as trainers poke him all over with a tennis ball attached to a stick to learn different movements.
The zoo's oldest elephant, 54-year-old Methai, has arthritis and moves much more slowly than other elephants.
Not only do the exercises help the elephants maintain their fitness and aid in monitoring their health, but activity also helps provide mental stimulation for the exceptionally smart creatures. "We want them to constantly be learning new things," Windle said. "We don't want to get stagnant. They are really smart and they want to be constantly working and learning."