Thanks for the insights. I really just don't know much about it. However, I did what I set out to do on my blog....and bring what I see and experience to you. But absolutely my heart does go out to these amazing animals. Sorry my happy go lucky personality comes across like I don't care. I do care. And thank you for sharing your thoughts and the links above.
You are viewing a single comment's thread from:
I totally understand, i would be super excited also if i encountered those animals! It's terrible what they do to those animals to let them listen to people. The really physical torture the animals so they stay calm if there are tourists around them but they are just so afraid being tortured again by their owners! What country is this?
Yeah, it's actually getting better across the country from what I hear. Maybe not for these elephants but over the past decade there are more and more tourist activities that are about interacting, feeding, cleaning, and caring for them...where before it was all about riding the elephants. This is Thailand. Elephants have always been part of the culture here. Used for war...then logging, and now this.
Nowadays there are more and more camps that call themselves a reserve or camps where you can be, for example, “Mahout for a day”. This sounds wonderful, but it is often not the case for the animals. These camps have a set routine every day, a set schedule that the elephant must meet so that you, the visitor, can touch, wash and feed the elephant. Seven days a week. Every day again. And different people every time. How stressful is that? Is that really a form of freedom the elephants prefers?
This form of tourism, in which the elephant has to follow a fixed daily schedule, is still a form of entertainment in my opinion; the interaction between you and the animal is determined by the camp. The elephant is not completely free to do whatever it wants. And how do you get an wild animal to behave like that between people?
This is a clip from Thailand where they "train" a young elephant. Its ducht but the image speek of its own i think.
https://www.standaard.be/cnt/dmf20200624_04999754
I've gotten quite the education! Really appreciate that. Thank you!
Thanks for the idea, this makes a nice blogspot later :p