Glad You Asked: How do elephants know they like pumpkins?

 

A huge crowd of people packed the Milwaukee County Zoo's elephant exhibit last weekend for the annual elephant pumpkin stomp. A lot of the people marveled at how the elephants made a beeline straight for the pumpkins scattered around the enclosure. How do elephants know they like pumpkins?

Glad You Asked.

"Well, the old saying is an elephant never forgets, right?" said pachyderm area supervisor Joan Stasica. "And elephants do get pumpkins this time of year, every year. So, I'm thinking they probably look forward to it."

Elephants get pumpkins a lot during Fall. Not just on pumpkin stomp day the week before Halloween.

"We get a lot of pumpkins at the zoo around this time of year." Stasica said. "And so the elephants, being the largest animal we have, they get quite a big proportion of the pumpkins that the zoo gets. So yea, around this time of year they're getting pumpkins almost every day. At least a pumpkin or two. It's a nice seasonal treat."

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