lephants.
Now GTAEF helps elephants and their mahouts by providing jobs for both, education for mahouts’ children, and even their wives have opportunities to earn income and help support the family and elephant. Because captive Asian elephants have never been domesticated and their DNA strands remain the same as their wild counterparts, the scientists at Think Elephants International are able to study elephant cognitive and social behaviors that would otherwise be near impossible through trying to observe wild Asian elephants.
GTAEF does not buy any elephants. They simply provide a home for both the elephant and the mahout family. The mahout is free to decide which activities his elephant will participate in and both the family and elephant are well cared for.
As a result of these forward thinking initiatives at GTAEF and the financial support of Anantara, important strides are being made in teaching mahouts positive reinforcement techniques, providing education so that children of mahouts can have other career opportunities, and in understanding elephant behaviors that can in turn help with conservation efforts.
About 95% of Thailand’s captive elephants (there are around 2000 total) are privately owned. They are quite valuable, estimated at around 2 million baht (about $60,000 US) per elephant and are quite expensive to care for. Most simply put, without work in elephant tourism mahouts would have no means to care for their elephants.
Circling back to the aforementioned video of baby elephants being tortured and that these tourism activities promote cruelty, well…it isn’t black and white. Clearly the elephant in the video is being tortured, but this doesn’t mean that all elephants are tortured. Think about how some people torture and beat dogs…and horses…and chickens…and probably camels. There are jackasses no matter where in the world you go. Thai people are intrinsically known for being kind and humane. And their elephants are simply too valuable to abuse.
Chains and the Bullhook
Unlike domesticated dogs, cats, horses, and even camels, captive elephants are still wild animals and most would likely be able to survive if released back into the wild (sadly, because of the logging there just isn’t space for them all though). Elephants are extremely strong and they have also live in a social structure. Captive elephants living in camps are living in unnatural herds and fights can break out. One elephant could easily kill or very badly injure another. They could also kill or very badly injure people. Because of this, mahouts use several tools to help train and control their captive elephants.
One thing I couldn’t get used to, though came to understand, was the elephants being chained. But they are wild animals and without the chains, they could seriously injure themselves or one another. Elephants are so strong, there are few things that can actually contain an elephant, like an electric fence would contain a horse or a fenced in yard would contain a dog. The chains should be long enough to give the elephants ample room to maneuver and the elephants should get plenty of exercise each day.
The bullhook probably looks like the most cruel tool, but when used properly it is the equivalent of carrying a knife or other form of protection. When we went dog sledding and on a snowmobile safari in Svalbard, it was necessary to carry a high-powered rifle in case a polar bear were to attack. The bullhook can be used similarly should something go wrong when working with an elephant.
Safe Elephant Tourism Activities
If you do decide to take part in elephant tourism activities, the camp you select should be done so carefully. There are a number of elephant tourism activities that are both safe for the elephant to take part in and ethical for you to do.
Elephant painting, where the elephants uses its trunk to hold a paintbrush and create a work of art for you to take home is a perfectly safe activity. The elephant’s trunk is an elongation of their upper lip and contains around 40,000 muscles but no bones. They use their trunk like a hand t