Bill Travers

It was an elephant called Polihoo.

Our co-founders, Bill and Virginia McKenna, starred alongside in a film in the 1960s.

And sadly, after filming that, Elephant was exported from the wild to London Zoo, where he was kept and tragically died just at the age of 16.

And that was the reason why Born Free was founded in the first place, the captivity of wild animals.

Born Free is now over 40 years old and we've been working to end the captive keeping of wild animals in captivity ever since.

What are the most common behavioral needs that you consistently see unmet in captive wild animals? What is the problem with having wild animals captive?

Yeah, so one of the terms that one of our founders, Bill Travers, coined was the word zookosis.

And zookosis is now a term which is quite widely used.