COLORADO SPRINGS – The Cheyenne Mountain Zoo celebrated a special birthday Sunday.
Miss the elephant is 50-years-old!
Reaching that ripe old age makes her one of the oldest living elephants in captivity in the nation. The typical lifespan of an elephant is into their late 30s.
Missy moved to the zoo in 2015 and they’ve been taking care of her ever since.
The zookeepers say there’s a lot of factors contributing to her long life span.
“We all have different genetics right, just like people do, elephants do too,” said … She’s definitely pretty active so maybe that’s playing a role in that too and of course in zoo’s we can provide a lot of different care for them and different management that helps them increase their longevity in the human care scenario.”
The oldest living elephant in captivity ever reported lived to be 88-years-old.
