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Home » News from Thailand » 'Most mahouts take good care of elephants'
'Most mahouts take good care of elephants'
Yesterday there was strong criticism from the World Animal Protection of the use of elephants in Thailand for tourist entertainment. According to the WAP, 80 percent of the 3.000 captive elephants in Cambodia, India, Sri Lanka and Thailand are exploited and malnourished.
Ittipan Khaolamai of an elephant camp in Ayutthaya, with ninety elephants, disagrees. According to him, most mahouts take good care of the jumbos because the animal is their only source of income. If an elephant becomes ill or unmanageable, it no longer has any income.
World Animal Protection maintains that elephants are abused to please tourists. Elephant rides and shows should change to animal-friendly activities, such as elephant watching. If you ride an elephant or take a selfie with the animal, there is a good chance that animal suffering is behind it.
Thailand has an estimated 4.000 domesticated elephants, the majority of whom work in the tourism industry. There are also 2.500 elephants living in the wild.
Source: Bangkok Post
Taking good care of an animal that has been tamed by cruel means is the same as beating someone tame and then feeding it well and saying 'look, good little fellow, that Hans'. Yes, I can do that too. That is part of the 'education' hiding.
No matter how well fed, an elephant is not made for sitting/riding!
The anatomy (no neck) makes it painful for the animal when someone sits on it.
Moreover, they are made “tame” in a very questionable way: just think of those huge, horrific hooks that a mahout/tamer has with him and with which he pricks/hits the elephant…
Moreover, it remains a wild animal that should be able to live in complete freedom!
I know some of those guys who have a trained elephant and can say with certainty that they treat their animals the way we Westerners pamper a baby.
The training of young elephants is also absolutely not as animal welfare organizations claim.
Of course there will be bad people in that industry who are bad for the animals, but those I know are certainly not.
Those animals have it a lot better than the animals in those so-called sanctuary reserves.
However, I am not in favor of those trained elephants. Those animals are not supposed to work for and like a human being, but to live freely in nature.
Everyone should know that we humans are so idiotic that we do more than is necessary to live, but I think that imposing animals is more than wrong.
The elephant trainers I know know that about me and increasingly agree.
However, it is the only thing they can do, and a very good source of income. That's why they don't stop, and just blame them.
Tourists need to become wiser. Stop spending money on that nonsense. Only then will it stop and those animals can live in freedom again.
There will always be pros and cons… take a look at Belgian / Dutch bosom… rides on horses and ponies on fairground attractions are allowed without any problems?
My Thai wife worked for Fox holidays for 10 years, knew many elephant camps and indeed there are many where those animals are well taken care of!
Once the mahouts are out of work, what could happen to the tamed elephants?
Or does everyone assume that a tourist wants to pay big money to see how an elephant takes a bath in the river?
I myself volunteered for several months in an elephant camp in Pai.
I am totally baffled by what I am reading here. The elephants were very well cared for there and the mahouts treat them kindly. Rides are indeed made, but the tourists are on the back, not on the neck. One should not exaggerate! Such an elephant weighs 3 tons and is very strong. They don't even feel a 70 kg person. What also bothers me is that the advocates of animal welfare (that's me too!) put the welfare of the animals before the welfare of humans. If tourism in Thailand is banned from taking elephant rides, several hundred mahouts will lose their jobs and livelihoods. But apparently that is not taken into account!
What nonsense reasoning to say that the mahouts will become unemployed. Any idea how to tame and control elephants? Volunteer calls itself that, yes you are used because you pay to be there. The mahouts can work anywhere in Thailand. There is a glaring lack of people in factories, in agriculture and horticulture, in road construction and construction companies. Why do you think that a few million people from the surrounding countries are necessary to to keep the economy running. Great job for those mahouts. Time for a reflection on what is being done to the elephants.
You watch too much TV. Those elephants are NOT abused by the Mahout as animal welfare exaggerators claim, and MSM are happy to show them over and over again.
Those films were shot in India in the 80s and have been digitally polished over and over again.
I don't condone taking those animals out of their natural habitat to work for them. I hate that too, see my comment earlier, but hate the lies in the media even worse.
The Mahout pamper those elephants from an early age more than we Westerners pamper our babies.
In addition, there is not much “natural environment” left in Thailand. You also get farmers complaining about damage done. There is no longer much room for wild elephants in Thailand.
Haven't watched TV for about 10 years, sorry. In Thailand I watch how they treat the elephants that roam the land with mahouts begging for money. And also 4 months ago I was in Ayuthaya again after a long time. This place didn't have an elephant corral as far as I know until 15 years ago. It was absurd what I saw there. Many places where tourists come, they were waiting for a ride. Commercial exploitation. There are plenty of other ways to earn money. If you read the reports in Thailand you know that there are more and more domesticated elephants. And these are taken from the wild. These are the facts given the numbers that cannot be explained by the natural increase in domesticated elephants.
Michel and Henk A and Piloe, you look at the treatment of elephants that are already tame or of young ones born in captivity. That is very simple. You thus pass taming wild elephants.
Animals that come from nature, are wild, and are tamely pounded. If you don't want to see that, say so, but don't come up with a bullshit story that they're right NOW. After all, there was a time when they were tortured.
But if you'd rather close your eyes to that, OK, then I know who you really are.
No, I will NOT pass that. I know some of those guys personally, and not yesterday.
Even the elephants they take from the wild, because they are found without a mother, are pampered like babies.
The videos you see of animal welfare exaggerators come from India from the 80s, digitally polished by MSM who see sensation in that.
That was an excess even then.
If you also hit a young elephant, he will never forget that. He will take revenge as soon as possible.
They are not people you can indoctrinate.
Those beasts don't know Socialism.
From “Siam on the Meinam”, “From the Gulf to Ayuthia”, Maxwell Sommerville, 1897 book, translated by me for a blog.
From the chapter on the king's bead:
The workout regimen is mean at times. They have levers and with straps they lift the elephant off the ground; with prods and other things they let the animals know that they must obey. These are the lessons an elephant will never forget. ”
How polished is this 1897 book?
The editors have not yet got around to posting an article about the howdah, but it includes a photo about the notorious pick hook used to poke elephants in the ears. Well, you don't want that thing in your skin, Michel.
Sorry but I think WAP's criticism is very exaggerated. Elephants in captivity are for the most part well cared for. The Elephants can no longer be released into the wild. They have to eat a lot, and that also has to be paid for. Many elephants were kept to work in the forests before. Dragging tree trunks. This work has been replaced by bmachines.
Please use your common sense before making unfounded criticism
Who pays for the food of the elephants in the wild? Where do the mahouts often feed the tame elephants? That's right, all the greenery in the forests and parks is free feed for the elephants. Just let the tame elephants back in national parks, every animal knows what it can eat.
An animal only needs a little insight, by nature, to know what is edible. He just uses his mind. And an elephant has an elephant skin against unfounded criticism.
Elephants have been used as pack animals for centuries and I don't really believe that a ride with a few tourists on their backs is detrimental to their well-being.
I'm not a biologist but there are 'experts' who claim that an elephant's back is fragile. Hard to imagine that two people can sit on a horse, but three people on an elephant wouldn't be possible? But just to be on the safe side, I won't climb on an elephant (I hope not the other way around either).
Yes, a ride on an elephant. Then take a look at the tourist hotspots in the country. 365 days a year and preferably all day long when there are tourists they are expected to take a "ride". So don't use a diminutive but realize that this goes on all day, day in and day out. Animal cruelty if you think about it I think.