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People have big hearts for elephants. I say that with some authority after seeing the response to my Feb. 12 column, in which I suggested Tucson's Reid Park Zoo should give up its two elephants, for humane and financial reasons, and concentrate instead on improving conditions for its other animals.

Since then, I have received more than 40 e-mails and voice mails, and the Star has received more than 32 letters to the editor on the column.

In my experience, that response is extraordinary. Not one of the 173 other columns I've written since I assumed this job last year has come even close to eliciting that level of response.

Only six correspondents supported keeping Connie and Shaba, Tucson's elephants, in the zoo. Almost all the others agreed that most zoos are not the proper place for elephants and supported sending Connie and Shaba to The Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee, an option I discussed.

Almost half the responses I received came from outside Arizona, which frequently indicates a letter-writing campaign. But I didn't see any of the typical telltale signs, such as similarities in wording or structure. Moreover, letter-writing campaigns are screened out of letters to the editor and are not counted, according to editorial assistant Mercedes Garcia.

Perhaps the most poignant response came from Tucsonan Jean Mergard-Welborn, who suffers from a degenerative eye disease and used a magnifying glass to read the column. It was not easy, she told me, reading through both the glass and her tears for the elephants' plight.

To me, such responses reveal the inaccuracy of the claim by Kristin L. Vehrs, interim executive director of the American Zoo and Aquarium Association, that the "controversy" over zoo elephants is being orchestrated "by a handful of animal-rights activists."

Vehrs made that assertion in a commentary Tuesday on the Star's Op-Ed page, which may suggest the degree to which her organization is insulated from the deep concern that ordinary people in Tucson and elsewhere have for the welfare of elephants in zoos.

I don't doubt some of the correspondents are animal-rights activists, but even others are experts and scholars. Vehrs admitted that several zoos voluntarily are giving up their elephants to concentrate their resources on other species. And on the academic front, Johns Hopkins University is scheduled later this year to publish the proceedings from a symposium on elephants and zoos.

One of the experts, David Hancocks, former head of the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, e-mailed me a paper he wrote to be published in the Johns Hopkins proceedings.

In his paper, titled "Most Zoos Don't Deserve Elephants," Hancocks contends that only a handful of zoos can afford the extraordinary space and financial commitments necessary to create proper conditions for elephants. He added in an e-mail that zoos should understand "that they do not need to hang on to this outdated vision of a zoo as a place that has to have an elephant."

Encouragingly, the public seems to be abandoning that vision even faster than zoo operators. Indeed, public attitudes toward animals have changed sharply over the years.

When I was a youngster, elephants, lions, tigers and other "wild animals" were objects of curiosity, to be exhibited in zoos and forced to perform in circuses, without much, if any, consideration that such treatment could be cruel. The focus always was on the courage and skill of the elephant handlers and lion tamers, not the treatment of the animals.

Now, as an indication of how much attitudes have changed, a story in the February/March issue of Scientific American Mind carries the headline, "Do Animals Have Feelings?"

Marc Bekoff, a biologist at the University of Colorado at Boulder, e-mailed me that article. He is co-founder with Jane Goodall of an organization named Ethologists for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, which fights for more humane ways of studying animal behavior.

Bekoff is a strongly spoken advocate for the idea that animals have emotions. Therefore, he contends, we have even another reason to treat them with respect.

Based on the responses to my elephant column, I am sure most people agree.