From Richard Reynolds #1

!cid_X_MA1_1233688879@aol, originally uploaded by bucklesw1. There has been controversy about the age of Lin Wang when he died on February 25, 2003 in the Taipei zoo in Taiwan (John Goodall has acknowledged that his 2009 death date is wrong). The zoo claimed that Lin Wang was 86 at the time of his death. This is a photo of Lin Wang with Chinese Commander-in-Chief Sun Li-jen and US Senator Warren Knowland (California). This was after Word War II. I estimate it was taken around 1947. As you see, the elephant is a young tusker. I am certainly no elephant age expert. I’ve just seen a lot of them, and in my opinion the elephant with Senator Knowland is not more than about 15 years old. He looks to be about the same age as the Indian circus tusker Tommy (later the celebrated King Tusk), when I photographed him in 1958. We know Tommy was born around 1944 or 1945, and therefore he was about 13 or 14 in 1958. He was working in harness, pulling up the tent etc. Based on the circa 1947 photo I would put Lin Wang’s birth in about 1932. That would have made him around 10 when the Japanese took him in 1942, perhaps too young to be doing heavy logging work. Maybe Lin Wang was tagging along with other work elephants, doing light pack work and learning the trade as it were, when he fell into enemy hands. Whatever, I would put him at or just over 70 when he died. In my opinion that is a more acceptable Asian elephant longevity than the 86 assigned by the Taipei zoo.