Ruby (elephant)

Ruby (July 13, 1973 – November 6, 1998) was a 4.5 ton asian elephant who lived at the Phoenix Zoo and was famous for creating paintings. The most expensive of her paintings sold for $25,000.^[1]

Ruby was born in Thailand, and was shipped to the Phoenix Zoo in February 1974 when she was about seven months old. Initially, she lived with a goat and some chickens for a few years without any elephant companionship.^[2] This initial period was difficult for Ruby. She would scatter grain in her small 20-by-30 foot enclosure to lure ducks into range, then she stomped them to death.^[3]

In time, she was moved into the main enclosure with the zoo's two other elephants, both African. Ruby got along with the other two. African and Asian elephants are of different species. Zoo officials decided to breed her, to provide her with companionship.

Ruby’s painting career began when her keepers saw her scratching in the dirt of her enclosure with a stick, and offered her a brush and paints.^[3]

Ruby painted twice a week.^[4] She was a fast painter, typically completing a painting in 10 minutes.^[3]

For three years, zookeepers did not publicize the knowledge that Ruby could paint. Eventually they revealed this and were able to sell her paintings to raise $50,000 for conservation efforts.

Ruby’s paintings were abstract in composition with multiple colors. An ophthalmologist determined that she has preferences for different colors.^[3] Two plates that she painted were appraised on the PBS television show Antiques Roadshow for $1500 in 2015.^[5]

In 1996, when she was 22, Ruby was shipped to the Tulsa Zoo to mate with a male elephant named Allan (who still lives in Tulsa) and lived in Tulsa for about a year. When she became pregnant in 1997, she was returned to Phoenix. Another female Asian elephant, Indu, was loaned from the Houston Zoo to be Ruby's birthing companion. Indu still lives at the Phoenix Zoo.

At the end of October 1998, Ruby began to show signs of labor, but the birth did not start. On Halloween, the zoo's veterinarians determined that her calf had died in her womb, and the decision was made to perform a Caesarean operation. When surgery began on November 6, it was discovered that her uterus had ripped and a massive infection had spread through her abdominal cavity. Her male fetal calf weighed 300 pounds, twice the size of a normal newborn elephant.^[6]

Ruby was euthanized immediately and her death triggered an outpouring of grief throughout the Phoenix area. When the Phoenix Zoo announced a free-admission day in honor of Ruby's memory, 43,000 people attended, nearly triple a normal day's attendance.^[7]

In the late 1990s, the Caretaker's House, a small stone cottage on the zoo grounds (left over from when the zoo site was a fish hatchery operated from the 1930s to the 1950s) was extensively renovated and dedicated to Ruby's memory and honor. Ruby's House has become a popular venue at the Phoenix Zoo for weddings and receptions.

• List of individual elephants
• Art and music section of Elephant cognition

• George, Dick (1995). Ruby: The Painting Pachyderm of the Phoenix Zoo. New York: Delacorte Press. ISBN 978-0385321006.