The idea of this blog stemmed from the idea of elephant tourism and the shocking truth behind elephants, or generally other wild animals’, good behaviour and obedience. Like what I mentioned under my texts in “About me”, most of the inspiration I got was watching documentaries on ivory trade and elephant obedience for tourism and entertainment, and then linking this to my planned trip to Thailand this coming summer.
Every year, tourism in Thailand is high especially since people want to interact with Asian elephants, especially elephant riding (Montgomery, 2014). This is due to the myriad and wide range of methods that Thailand uses to attract tourists in their elephant trekking activities (Duffy & Moore, 2010), which honestly, brings in a lot of money!
Of the approximately 35,000 – 40,000 Asian elephants left in the world, about 3,000 – 4,00o are held captive in Thailand (The Telegraph, 2016).
Sadly, elephants in captivity face a lot of abuse, hence making them obedient to avoid punishment.
Here are some of the sad and harsh reality that elephants go through (Montgomery, 2014):
- Elephants are not given the luxury to bathe and apply mud screen on themselves, which help protect them from the the blistering rays of the sun
- Exhibit stereotypies (repetitive pointless behavioural patterns), which are generally indicators of poor health (Kurt & Garai, 2001)
- swaying of body and trunk as they are fore- and backstepping
- moving sideways with head nodding and weaving
- They are expected to go long hours without food
- Elephant mahouts often train or punish the elephants with painful bull hooks
- Baby elephants are separated from their mother and are placed in separated cages to be “tamed” – physically abused, for submission
Watch the 1 hour long documentary, ‘An elephant never forgets‘ here if you have the time!
