By Finnleigh Gould

We have all heard of the elephant in the room, but what about the elephants in Fairhope, Pennsylvania?

                                                                                   Photo by Makayla Stoliker  

Makayla Stoliker, elephant keeper and zoo education specialist, took this photo of an African elephant traversing the ICC property in Fairhope, Pennsylvania.

Makayla Stoliker, a mother of two and elephant keeper for five years, shared her journey with the International Conservation Center’s African elephants.

Stoliker said that while she earned her bachelor’s degree in biology from Westminster College, she volunteered at the Erie and Pittsburgh Zoo. She began her career as a research intern and educated the audience at Kids Kingdom during her time at the Pittsburgh Zoo. After four years of volunteering, she was hired at the Pittsburgh Zoo’s satellite facility, the International Conservation Center (ICC).

During her career at the ICC, Stoliker became a professional elephant keeper, and later, an education specialist.

Now, Stoliker works at Geochemical Testing, an environmental lab, where she is the head of the waste characterization department. Stoliker continues to volunteer for the ICC, while also entrepreneurs her own business, Sunhat Gallery.

Background

Q: What led you to becoming an elephant keeper?

A: “I actually didn’t even know that I wanted to be working in the zoo field until I started volunteering after I graduated high school. I grew up as the weirdo animal kid. My whole life I was told, ‘If you want to work with animals your only option is, really, to be a vet.’  In high school I started working at a vet’s office, and I realized very quickly that I did not want to be a vet. So, I went into college for a dual Spanish and international business major. 

“My senior year of high school I had gone through a phase where I was trying to do anything to travel the world. I never wanted to have children or settle down. Then I went into college, and two weeks into my freshman year I found out I was pregnant with Rylee, my oldest. So, I had to make a change in what I wanted to do with my life, and I started volunteering at the Pittsburgh and Erie Zoo.

“When I started volunteering, I was like, ‘Okay, I want to be in the zoo. I just don’t know what I want to do, but I definitely love the zoo world.’ The Kids Kingdom job at Pittsburgh Zoo allowed me to start figuring out what I wanted to do. It allowed me to be behind the scenes anywhere, except for the elephant department.

“I was their first elephant intern at the Pittsburgh Zoo. There was this opportunity once a year where you could go and job shadow anywhere in the entire zoo. You could quite literally go anywhere in the zoo except for the elephant department. I’m like, ‘I’ve been everywhere pretty much already. I’ve seen everything. I want to see the elephants.’ 

“I convinced my boss to approach the manager of the elephant department. She told him, ‘Just let her job shadow for a day. She’s responsible, you don’t have to worry about her trying to run in and hug an elephant, or anything crazy.’ So, I got to job shadow for that day. 

“I immediately fell in love. That is where I needed to be, that is where I wanted to be, and I asked, ‘Do you have any internship opportunities, or anything?’ He flat out told me, ‘No,’ and I was like, ‘Well, what do I need to do to change your mind?’ He told me, ‘If you can come up with something that benefits you, and also benefits our program then I will consider letting you be an intern.’ 

“It so happened that they were going to be transporting one of the female elephants to Oregon. So, I came up with my very first original research idea. I studied the behavioral effect of the transition of the female elephant’s transport out of the facility on her two daughters that she left behind, as well as the rest of the herd dynamic.

“The handful of months after her move out of the facility, I became good friends with the keepers, so I just hung around and would intern as I was able to. Once I graduated, they moved me out here (to the ICC) full time. As soon as I set foot in the barn, I was like, ‘This is where I want to be.’”

Joy and Connection

Q: What about the presence of elephants captivates you?

A: “The training is just so unique with the elephants, they’re unlike any other animal. I love the elephants’ individual personalities, they’re just so unique. Elephant keepers have a very close relationship with them. We are close to free contact with the elephants. 

“There’s free contact and protected contact. Free contact is what it sounds like, you’re sharing space with them, and protected contact is just any type of barrier between you and the elephant. At the ICC, we have giant bollards, which is our main boundary, and they’re spaced far apart so that we can go through, but they can’t.”

Q: What kind of activities do you do with the elephants when training them?

A: “So, enrichment is a huge part of the zoo world, in general, for any animal. Enrichment is huge, because we must fill their time, but with the elephants, specifically, enrichment is very specific. 

“Anything you give an elephant they’re going to break. Lions and tigers and any other animal, you can give them, you know, balls or toys, but with an elephant, I mean, they can put a whole stinking basketball in their mouth. They’re just so big, so everything must be constructed crazy big. 

“So, we do a lot of enrichment with giant things. We have stuff made of fire hoses, and they have tractor tires. We even do a lot of food enrichment. Since their sense of smell is so crazy, we will just bury things down in the sand. 

“During the summer months when they are out in their yard, they’re mostly just doing their elephant thing. During the wintertime, when they spend most of their time inside the barns, that’s when a lot of our training actually occurs. We make sure that old behaviors stay consistent and stay tight. Then we also train new behaviors, you know, fun training.

“It’s not just about their physical health though. Their relationship with us as their keepers and trying to think outside of the box and make them think is one of the most important parts of training.

“We play a lot of games and get silly with it. We’ll do obstacle courses, and we’ll get them to move items or move in a circle, or get them to get their trunk to touch the X. We even get them to put their butt against the circle on the wall. We do stuff like that to make not only us think but try to get them thinking as well.”

Photo by Makayla Stoliker

Makayla Stoliker training an African elephant. Stoliker, head of the Pennsylvania Lamb Olympics, now uses her skills to train sheep. Stoliker is a member of the Pennsylvania Sheep and Wool Growers Association (PSWGA). 

Q: Do you have a special connection with any elephant in particular?

A: “I definitely had my elephants that I gravitated towards the most, and most keepers do have their one, or two, elephants that they seem to mesh with. I had three elephants that I loved working with. 

“There was one that really was very difficult, because she had a very strong personality. She was the matriarch of the herd, and she was not food motivated. Elephants all love their snacks, but not Thandi. She either liked you or didn’t like you. You can’t really make an elephant do anything they don’t want to do, but at the end of the day, I loved that she wasn’t food motivated and that she relied more on that personal connection. 

“On the absolute opposite end of the spectrum is the oldest female, Bette. She is the absolute bottom dog, and just the sweetest elephant. She was one of my main elephants that I worked with, because she just really gravitated towards me. 

“There’s a fine line of being too strong of personality for her since she is very timid and needs somebody to be confident for her. She also needs someone to make it fun, because she’s the elephant that will pretend to fall asleep. If you don’t keep her wheels moving, she’s going to be an old lady.

“I want them to be listening, so I would just tell her about my day and just be chit-chatting with her while I was making her do routines. It showed whether or not she really was listening, because I could be having a full conversation and tell her to give me her foot and she would throw up her foot. If you give her too much silence she’ll start getting in her own thoughts, and then she’ll start thinking about ways that she can mess up or pretend to fall asleep.

“My other favorite elephant was very particular. She had a lot of residual issues from being a post-survivor from Africa. However, she was fun, because when she was working, she was on it. She loved to work and attention, but she also had tells. She didn’t know how to control her energy.

“I used a lot of my parenting. I felt like she needed a parent, like she needed somebody who tells her, ‘You’re being good now, but this is electrical behavior.’ 

“They’re all just so different, but those are my main three that I gravitated towards. But we also had our bull elephant, Jackson, who is just magnificent. He’s ginormous and he’s just so cool, he’s just such a good boy. They are all like children, but you know as a parent you don’t have a favorite child, but depending on certain situations some are better in the moment than others.”

Raising Kids and Elephants

Q: In what ways had been a single mother played a role in training elephants, and how have you shared those experiences with Rylee?

A: “Rylee went along the whole of my career development with me because I was eighteen when I had her. So, I put myself through college with her, and she watched me grow and develop my career. We moved out here together, and she’s gotten to see and do a lot of cool things. When I moved out here it was me and her and two dogs.

“I truly think it was such a weird situation, because I feel like I was a better elephant trainer than a parent, but I also feel like I was a better parent because I had elephant training. With kids you know that you are raising contributing members of society, but it’s all training at the end of the day. 

“For example, Seeni needed a parent and to have that balance of what’s good and bad behavior. When I first started at the ICC, they had a much more hands-off approach with her. She just needed more good attention. That’s just basic trial psychology. I have that with my own child. When you leave a kid alone to their own devices they’re going to start getting up to mischief and no good.

“I also was the only parent for a while among all the keepers, so I had a lot of child psychology that I would relate to a lot of my experiences. Every kid is different, and every elephant is different, and so what works for one might not work for the other. I just really felt like I used that side of my brain.” 

Photo by Makayla Stoliker

Makayla Stoliker and her eldest daughter Rylee.

Q: How do you deal with elephant tantrums, and the dangers of their size?

A: “So, a lot of it is you just you don’t get yourself in that situation. For example, Seeni had tendencies to lash out. You could see her energy growing, and you could see it in her eyes. She would start getting a little squirrely and check around her shoulder. Her tail would start doing this weird side thing. 

“She’d think she was being sneaky sometimes, but when you have a strong relationship with them you know. You start recognizing that she’d start to do those things, and you’d then either change the route that you’re going or try to distract her.”

Q: What are the joys and issues that come with their social-emotional capacity?

A: “So, we had our calf, Tsuni, and she was two and a half years old before she passed. She was probably the best thing for the herd dynamic, even though it was a very nerve-wracking experience when we knew that Sukuri was pregnant. She was a first-time mom and hadn’t been around calves. Jackson, thankfully, had been around a bunch of calves. He’s been all over the United States.

“On the other hand, both the Pittsburgh Zoo and the ICC elephants are all call survivors. That means they all came directly from Africa. Their families were killed, and they were all orphaned, and quite literally if it weren’t for facilities like us, they would all not have survived.”

Research and Conservation

Q: Why is the breeding program at the ICC important when regarding the elephants as call survivors?

A: “The African elephant breeding program is a safety net. African elephants are endangered, and the unfortunate part is, due to their breeding cycle, you can’t just make baby elephants. They’re pregnant for 22 months, then on top of that, you then have them stay with their mom until they’re between 6 and 12 years old. That’s also why it was so hard whenever Tsuni passed. 

“One of the leading causes of their endangerment isn’t poaching anymore, it is the threatening offensive of human-elephant conflict. In certain areas you almost have too many elephants. Unfortunately, you can’t just move elephants. There’s just not a realistic way to move them, and it’s just not accessible.

“They need to figure out how to survive in that area, because they are dependent on their memories. Then, because they don’t know the area they explore into human areas. They will also quite literally just travel miles to go back to where they came from, so there’s really no good answer.”

Q: Have you, or the ICC, done any research to combat this issue?

A: “I got a research proposal approved for a color vision test. Elephants will naturally avoid certain colors, and so beehive fencing in Africa has been a huge thing, as well as trying to economically help villages with the bees and chili powder guns. There’s no real specific behavioral research that tells you what elephants see, but we can make predictions based on the anatomy of their eyes. We predict that they see like a human color blind.

“Through the Eger test, which is if you’ve ever seen the tests where a picture is placed in front of you and it’s all a bunch of little dots with different colors, and within all of that it’ll be like a blue background and yellow two. With that we could have more of an idea of what colors they see. Then, if we’re able to figure out what colors they primarily see they could distinguish between villages via color.

“So, you can start having these colors and negative things associated with them become a secondary deterrent. This way, we may not have to use chili guns.”

Q: Do you feel that zoos are important for the conservation of animals, and how so?

A: “I am a firm believer in the importance of zoos. You can’t truly care about something when you have never seen it in person. You can read about elephants, you can Google photos, but it is not as impactful as real and direct contact. 

“Especially for the younger generations, I feel like such an experience is going to make better stewards for the earth. It is so much more impactful to have people care and understand why we’re doing what we’re doing versus if you’re just reading it in a book.

“I think it’s so important for people to care. Keepers as well, I feel, aren’t given as much credit as what they really deserve. We genuinely care about the species, but we care about them as individuals and we really give our entire lives, sometimes, to the animals and the facilities that we work for.”

Photo by Makayla Stoliker

Makayla Stoliker training one of the ICC’s elephants. Stoliker has retired from elephant keeping, but still volunteers and advocates for the ICC.