From The KOTV Vault: Tulsa Zoo Starts Weighing Elephants In 1981

In November of 1981, the Tulsa Zoo weighed the elephants for the very first time. Jessica Scallen says they weigh their elephants monthly.

Gunda is 62. She's been at the zoo since 1954. The numbers jump around a bit when she weighs in.

"Want to say, 6,890?" Scallen asked.

"I think that looks about right."

Gunda's lost 100 pounds since last month - not that much if you weigh nearly 7,000 pounds.

They use a platform scale to weigh them and get all four feet up there. There's a digital read-out. It's rated at 15,000 pounds.

By now it's pretty routine, but it wasn't that way on the very first weigh in.

"Never in the history of the Tulsa Zoo have the Elephants been weighed," a zoo official told News On 6 back in November of 1981.

Jilda Unruh did the story. The Zoo folks needed help so they called in the Oklahoma Highway Patrol and used their portable truck scales.

But you don't get elephants to step up on portable scales without some training...

"Getting all four feet off a solid surface like what they're used to walking on isn't something that's natural to them," said Larry Nunley of the Tulsa Zoo. He was large mammal curator in 1981.

"So we got some bricks, and put four bricks down in four different spots and got them to stand on that," Nunley said. "First time, through, they didn't know what we wanted them to do."

Turns out the elephants did fine; troopers did too. Weighing the elephants was a difficult task back then, now it's easier.

We weighed Gunda, but how about Sooky, the other female?

"Sooky, on the other hand, is tall - very long legged," Jessica Scallen said. "She's kind of our super-model of the Asian elephant world."

Super model, huh?

Sooky steps up.

How much?: "9,020, that seems about right," Scallen said.

Sooky weighs a ton more than Gunda - that's a lot for a super-model.

I gave her a healthy snack, an apple. An elephant's tongue is slick as a wet bar of soap; didn't know that.

Also didn't know there are elephant exercises. They continue working out until Sooky decides she's had enough. There's no way to get four and a half tons of pachyderm to exercise if she doesn't want to.

They chart their weights now, and the information is used as an indicator of overall health. It all started with that first weigh-in in November, 1981.