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Why the Need for Elephant-Friendly Methods? Training and handling elephants by using pain as one of the ways to control them is a widespread practice in Asia as well as in many Western facilities, such as circuses. The main reason for using pain-inflicting methods is unawareness of the existence of an efficient, animal-friendly alternative. 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. Painful Experiences Increase Elephant Aggression Such methods also cause 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. |
Improved Methods Benefit Handlers and Elephants Alike 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.
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. |
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. 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. |
