Blog 3: When Elephant’s Attack
On June 20th an elephant trainer in India was killed by an elephant he was attempting to train. This is nothing new as elephants have been known to turn on their trainers or mahouts (elephant keepers) from time to time. The thing that made this tragic event stand out, was the entire attack was caught on CCTV. For a bit of context, let’s take a step back and discuss why elephants in captivity turn on people. Elephants in the wild do attack people but that is a blog for another time. In captivity, the reasons why elephants attack are a little different than why they may attack people in the wild. In captivity, trained elephants are almost always mistreated. Tools involved in “training” the elephants look and are barbaric. Sticks with a large, sharp hooks are often used to stick into the elephant’s skin and drag it in the direction the trainer wants the elephant to go. It’s also used to hook into the elephant’s leg if the trainer wants it to lift its leg. Sticks to whip the elephants are also frequently used. Negative reinforcement is is common place in elephant training. You may often see elephants in countries like Thailand, Indonesia and India with blue blotches around their head and body. This is antiseptic, likely used on the wounds inflicted by the mahout’s hook.
Now that that we have some background context, and it goes a lot deeper than my brief explanation, we can talk about how intelligent elephants are. Elephants have amazing memories. It is likely that the folklore of ‘elephants never forget’ is actually true. Elephants need good memories. They need to remember migration routes, where water sources are during times of drought and also remember family members. An example of how good their memories are, is an elephant that migrated thousands of kilometres as a calf, can remember a water source it was taken to by its mother during the migration 50 years later, even if it only visited that watering hole that 1 time as a calf. Elephants have also been known to recognise a person who mistreated it as a calf and has never seen them since that encounter, and attack them 40 years later, even if they only had that 1 encounter with them as a baby. Elephants are intelligent animals and experience vast ranges of emotion. They can be jealous, spiteful and vengeful.
What happened with this elephant trainer in India was likely caused because the elephant finally had enough, It’s a 53 year old elephant that would have been in captivity its whole life and it finally snapped. As you can see on the confronting footage, the trainer is whipping the elephant with a stick, trying to get it to turn. Like a person who has been abused and exposed to psychological and physical trauma their whole life would, the elephant was fed up and lashed out. The footage shows the elephant standing on the man, crushing him, folded him in half and walked over him. It picked his crushed, lifeless body up with its trunk and dropped him.
It’s absolutely tragic that human life was lost and tragic that a beautiful animal had suffered that for 53 years to the point it reacted like that. What can we learn? this shit shouldn’t still be happening. So many tourists visit these elephant places. They are under the illusion that the trainers are friends with the elephant and have a special bond. They don’t. The elephant is just so scared of being beaten, it obeys the trainer. A lot of places make out that the elephants are rescued and its a sanctuary and you’re helping the elephant when you ride them. This isn’t true. No wildlife sanctuary would ever let you ride their animals.
When we go to Africa and take our guests to see Rambo and Rachel, the African savanna elephants, this is what rescued elephants look like and how people interreact with legit rescued elephants. Everything is done on the elephant’s terms. They have an entire game reserve to roam around. If they did not want to come and interact with people, they wouldnt and no one would force them to,
Next time you are on holiday and want to interact with elephants, research the place, see how it’s run. Look at any marks on the elephants. Do not ride them and know that no legit wildlife sanctuary or rescue facility would ever let you ride an animal there.