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Working
Elephants
There are
approximately 15,000 to 16,000 working elephants in a dozen countries
in Asia. The
largest populations of working elephants are found in Burma, India, and
Thailand.
Most elephants are trained and handled in a way that involves pain and
sometimes injury. The same
applies to many Western facilities, such
as circuses.
In traditional Asian elephant-handling communities, the main reason for
using pain-inflicting methods is
not cruelty, but
an
unawareness of the existence of an efficient, animal-friendly
alternative.
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Improving Handling - A Win-Win
Today, almost all of the
working
elephants across Asia are trained and handled by traditional methods
dating back thousands of years. Although these methods comprise a
substantial amount of accumulated knowledge, unfortunately they also
include practices inflicting pain and suffering on the elephants. One
of the reasons is the widespread misconception that pain and fear are
necessary for controlling an elephant.
Many trainers with long traditional backgrounds deeply care about
elephants. In their cases, the reason for practices that harm elephants
is not cruelty, but unawareness of the existence of an alternative. The
information of an alternative has so far been hard to come by for an
Asian trainer, as it has only existed in distant parts of the world: in
the advances of animal behaviour science and in the practices of some
individual trainers in various corners of the world.
WEPA was established for the purpose to give East and West an
opportunity to meet. In WEPA's experience, interaction with the most
skilled colleagues in the East has been received with an admirable
open-mindedness: trainers who genuinely care about elephants enjoy
adopting an efficient and reliable training system in which there is no
need to hurt elephants. In addition to an increase in elephant
well-being, this also improves work safety and work satisfaction of
trainers.
Painful Experiences Increase Elephant
Aggression
Pain-inflicting training and handling also causes safety issues for
handlers. Elephants with
painful memories occasionally attack their handlers, resulting in
hundreds of deaths per year across Asia. Similar incidents sometimes
occur for the same reason in circuses in the West.
An especially risky time with an elephant is when a male elephant is
experiencing one of his hormonal arousal periods, called musth. Deaths
of handlers and other peoples occur significantly more often with
elephants in musth compared to other elephants. Both research and
experience indicate that the extent of male aggression during musth is
clearly correlated to the painful experiences of handling he has had
earlier in life. Some elephants even show very specific increased
aggression: for example, there are cases in which an elephant that has
been harassed by children at a young age later tries to especially
attack children during his musth, and an elephant that has been handled
painfully in a specific place at a young age later behaves especially
aggressively at that place during musth.
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Carrying
tourists is one of the jobs of working elephants. Other
uses of elephants vary from country to country and include a wide range
of all walks of life. Some elephants are used in religious ceremonies,
others are made to perform tricks with street beggars. Elephants are
also used in logging, both legal and illegal, as well as in managing of
nature conservation areas.
When used in nature
conservation, elephants are involved in a wide range of tasks,
including
anti-poaching patrolling, arresting of poachers, conservation research,
and various rescue missions. These elephants are crossing the River
Narayani in Chitwan National Park in Nepal during a population count of
endangered Indian rhinos. In most parts of southern Nepal's national
parks, as well as those of some other countries, elephants are the only
possible all-terrain vehicle.
Elephant
handlers, or mahouts as they are called in many Asian countries, vary
widely in their way of handling elephants. Some are gentle, while
others often resort to unnecessary violence towards the elephant. WEPA
provides information for elephant trainers and handlers about
science-based, efficient training and handling methods that make it
unnecessary to use pain, injury, or fear as methods of controlling
elephants.
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The
rims of the ears of an elephant tell
a lot about the attitude of the mahout (handler). Each of the notches
torn in this elephant's ears is a result of the mahout sticking the
sharp metal tip of an ankus (bullhook) through her earflap and pulling
it, in an attempt to control or discipline her. A more skilled mahout
could be easily recognized by the intact rims of the elephant's ears.
If
the living
conditions of elephants are very stressful, this sometimes results in
visible problem behaviours, such as the elephants mutilating each other
by biting off the end of another individual's tail. This elephant has
previously lived in a logging camp in Burma, from where the branded
letter on her rump also originates. Now she leads a good life at
Elephant Nature Park, a sanctuary in northern Thailand.
A
blinded eye. In some countries, like
Thailand, there is a belief that an elephant becomes easier to control
if the handler blinds one of the eyes by stabbing it with a knife or
some other sharp object.
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