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Just how do you get an elephant on a treadmill?
Maggie needs to lose weight at zoo

The Associated Press

Thursday, September 15, 2005

CREDIT: The Associated Press
Workers install what is believed to be the world's first elephant treadmill for Maggie at her new digs at the Alaska Zoo in Anchorage.

ANCHORAGE -- A 7,260-kilogram treadmill specifically built to exercise Maggie the elephant arrived at the Alaska Zoo, but the question remains: Just how do you get a more than four-tonne animal fighting the battle of the bulge to use a treadmill?

Zoo director Tex Edwards is optimistic she can do it.

"Every time we've undertaken to teach Maggie something new she has always learned it faster than we anticipated," Edwards said yesterday. "She seems to enjoy new challenges."

The six-metre-long by 2.5-metre-wide treadmill was built by Conveyor Engineering, an Idaho-based company that designs heavy-duty conveyor systems for mining. Automatic Welding in Anchorage put the treadmill together, believed to be the first one built specifically for an elephant.

"They have built them for race horses and race camels but never for an elephant," said assistant zoo director Pat Lampi.

The treadmill arrived Monday and was lowered through the roof, which has been removed for a renovation project to double Maggie's living space.

The treadmill sits in a well in the elephant house so that it will be flush with the floor. It also is equipped with gates on either end so she can get on and off the treadmill, which is separated from her main living quarters by steel beams.

Zoo officials are eager to get the elephant house renovation completed and Maggie back in her permanent home before the snow flies in October. Since summer, she's been housed in a temporary shelter of empty truck trailers equipped with two large heaters that are turned on when the temperature dips below 10 C.

At last weigh-in in August 2004, Maggie tipped the scales at about 4,135 kilograms, which is around 455 kilograms overweight. But Lampi estimates that under her new diet and health regime, even without the benefit of the treadmill, she's already lost roughly 410 kilograms.

On the Net: www.alaskazoo.org
© The Vancouver Province 2005