Dalip, a Miami zoo elephant since the 1960s and one of the nation’s oldest, dies at 56

Dalip — believed to be the oldest male elephant in the United States and an icon at the Miami zoo dating back to its original Key Biscayne location — died Thursday at his home in Zoo Miami after months of declining health and weight loss. He was 56.

After a birth in captivity in India, Dalip arrived in South Florida as a calf in the 1960s. He was the only surviving mammal from the original Crandon Park Zoo, a county facility that moved to expanded quarters in South Miami-Dade in 1980.

Dalip, who stood more than 10 feet tall and weighed more than 10,000 pounds at his healthiest, lived there for his adult life, except for a three-year residence in a Central Florida elephant sanctuary in the 1990s while Dade County rebuilt its zoo after Hurricane Andrew.

He arrived in Key Biscayne in the summer of 1967 as a 1-year-old calf, a gift from game hunter Ralph Scott, a benefactor who provided the zoo with some of its prized animals in the 1960s and ’70s. In 1981, Dalip sired a male calf Spike, now living at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo in Washington, D.C.

Dalip died by euthanasia on Thanksgiving Day, hours after zoo staff discovered him lying on the ground and unable to rise. After failed efforts to get him on his feet with the aid of straps and forklifts, the operation turned to keeping him comfortable. Staff not working Thanksgiving shifts returned, joining colleagues already there to say goodbye and present Dalip with some of his favorite treats, according to communications director Ron Magill.

“They brought him peanut butter-and-jelly sandwiches. And he did eat them,” Magill said. “They gave him cantaloupe. They gave him watermelon. And he seemed to really enjoy it. Even though he had no strength.”

One of five elephants at Zoo Miami before his death, Magill noted that Dalip (pronounced dah-LUP) was believed to be the oldest “bull” elephant in the United States. His tusks grew long enough to require trimming to prevent them from dragging on the ground, one measure of the elephant’s long life.

“He served as an ambassador for his species and brought smiles to the faces of Zoo Miami visitors for over four decades,” Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said in a statement released by the zoo. On Twitter, Magill described Dalip as “arguably the most iconic, magnificent animal” that has ever lived at Zoo Miami.

“This really hurts,” he said.