The findings from the demographic data startled the researchers. They found that Asian elephants in European zoos typically live about 15 years, only half as long as elephants in timber camps. Asian elephants can live as long as 65 years in the wild, the researchers said. Rebecca Hawkers, a spokesperson for the RSPCA, said the extensive study “provides compelling, substantiated information that leaves no doubt that elephants’ welfare is compromised in European zoos.” Elephants have lived in captivity for more than 4,000 years, many of them held in zoos and circuses worldwide. Captive elephants are also used in some Asian countries for timber-logging and in religious ceremonies. Ros Clubb of Oxford University, a zoologist and co-author of the report, said the study was done after “work by other biologists had already set alarm bells ringing.” Findings have shown, for example, that 35 per cent of zoo females fail to breed and that 15 to 25 per cent of Asian elephant calves are stillborn. Clubb and her co-author, Georgia Mason, also a zoologist at Oxford University, said females in the wild normally don’t conceive until around 18 years of age, but female elephants in zoos often begin breeding as early as age 12, putting them and their offspring at higher risk of death and illness. The researchers also found that zoo elephants are often overweight—up to 50 per cent heavier than their counterparts in the wild—and commonly exhibit unusual behaviour such as weaving to and fro.