ELEPHANT ENTERAINMENT IN THAILAND

ELEPHANT ENTERTAINMENT IN THAILAND

Most of Thailand’s 1,000 working elephants are employed in the tourism industry. They perform in shows and carry tourists on treks to hill tribe villages, ancient ruins, waterfalls and rain forest. A popular trip in the Chiang Rai area includes an elephant trek in jungle-covered mountains combines with a raft trip down a river.

Reporting from Surin, Thailand, Gillian Murdoch of Reuters wrote: Sucking up sugarcane with their trunks and circling busy traffic roundabouts, the elephants that roam Thai towns at festival time seem as much at home in the city as in the forest. Shows that feature elephants painting pictures, playing polo and whirling hoola hoops on their trunks have become an economic lifeline for more than a thousand domesticated elephants, who lost their incomes when Thailand banned logging in 1989. [Source: Gillian Murdoch, Reuters, December 23, 2007]

According to AFP: Separated from their mothers, jabbed with metal hooks, and sometimes deprived of food — many Thai elephants are tamed by force before being sold to lucrative tourism sites increasingly advertised as 'sanctuaries' to cruelty-conscious travellers. Elephants were phased out of the logging industry in the 1990s, ago, leaving their mahouts unemployed. So they turned to Thailand's flourishing tourism industry, a burgeoning sector of amusement parks offering elephant rides and performances. “A tamed elephant can now fetch up to $80,000, a colossal investment that then requires gruelling hours of work and increasingly bizarre stunts to be recouped.[Source: AFP, December 23, 2019]

“As tourists become more aware of the potential cruelty of such activities, a growing number of places have opted to use the term 'sanctuary' or 'refuge'. Many do not permit rides or animal performances. Instead tourists are encouraged to feed, groom and care for elephants, gaining an unforgettable experience with one of nature's most majestic creatures. But charities warn that even seemingly benign options, like bathing them, could still be problematic."Bathing with elephants...is often stressful for elephants and mahouts especially when dealing with groups of excited young people," Jan Schmidt-Burbach of World Animal Protection told AFP, .

“"The best option is to leave it to the elephant to decide if and how to bath and ask tourists to stand back to observe and enjoy this moment without interference." But even this may not be enough. Some animal rights experts warn it can be hard to discern the treatment of the animals after the crowds have gone home. Some reported cases of elephants at so-called sanctuaries being chained for long hours, forced to sleep on concrete, and malnourished.

Elephants at Chiang Mai Elephant "Sanctuaries"

Mae Taeng park in the northern Thai city of Chiang Mai receives up to 5,000 visitors per day and charges an entrance fee of about $50. Many come to see Suda, who holds a brush in her trunk and paints Japanese-style landscapes for visitors who can later buy the prints for up to $150 before taking an elephant ride through the hills. [Source: AFP, December 23, 2019]

Natasha Daly wrote in National Geographic: “Maetaman is one of many animal attractions in and around tourist-swarmed Chiang Mai. People spill out of tour buses and clamber onto the trunks of elephants that, at the prodding of their mahouts’ bullhooks (long poles with a sharp metal hook), hoist them in the air while cameras snap. Visitors thrust bananas toward elephants’ trunks. They watch as mahouts goad their elephants — some of the most intelligent animals on the planet — to throw darts or kick oversize soccer balls while music blares.[Source: Natasha Daly, National Geographic, June 2019]

“Meena is one of Maetaman’s 10 show elephants. To be precise, she’s a painter. Twice a day, in front of throngs of chattering tourists, Kongkhaw puts a paintbrush in the tip of her trunk and presses a steel nail to her face to direct her brushstrokes as she drags primary colors across paper. Often he guides her to paint a wild elephant in the savanna. Her paintings are then sold to tourists.

“Meena’s life is set to follow the same trajectory as many of the roughly 3,800 captive elephants in Thailand and thousands more throughout Southeast Asia. She’ll perform in shows until she’s about 10. After that, she’ll become a riding elephant. Tourists will sit on a bench strapped to her back, and she’ll give several rides a day. When Meena is too old or sick to give rides — maybe at 55, maybe at 75 — she’ll die. If she’s lucky, she’ll get a few years of retirement. She’ll spend most of her life on a chain in a stall.

“As tourist demand for ethical experiences with animals has grown, affordable establishments, often calling themselves “sanctuaries,” have cropped up purporting to offer humane, up-close elephant encounters. Bathing with elephants — tourists give them a mud bath, splash them in a river, or both — has become very popular. Many facilities portray baths as a benign alternative to elephant riding and performances. But elephants getting baths, like those that give rides and do tricks, will have been broken to some extent to make them obedient. And as long as bathing remains popular, places that offer it will need obedient elephants to keep their businesses going.

Asian Elephants Entertainment in Thailand

In mid November the Surin Elephant Roundup is held in northeastern Thailand. It is an internationally famous event in which over 100 elephants participate in mock elephant hunts, polo matches, mock elephant battles, tug-of-wars and demonstrations of log pulling skills. In the mock battle, warrior with spears advance on the backs of the elephants to the sound of drums while soldiers with and swords guards the animals legs. A parade of elephants outfitted for medieval warfare is also held. Over 40,000 people show up for the event at the Surin’s main stadium. Most of elephant mahouts are members of the Suay tribe, who live near the Thai-Cambodian border. There is also Thai dancing and other events.

In 1920s, hundreds of elephants were rounded up. Some were taken to work. Others were released. The released ones were promoted to chase a boy with an umbrella who was whisked away at the last minute..

Elephants have been used in fashion shows. One baby elephant was hired to greet Michael Jackson by “rock n’ rolling” to one of his songs. At tourist centers colored paper made from elephant dung is made into phot albums and bookmarks sold to tourists.

Some elephants make a living making music and producing works of art. At the government-sponsored Thai Elephant Conversation Center in Lampang, an elephant orchestra produces music with harmonicas, Thai bowed instruments, gongs made from circular saws confiscated by illegal logging operations, drums and Thai xylophones. Cassettes and CDs of their music sell relatively well.

The elephants hold the harmonicas with their trunks and blow in them with their mouths and bang the gongs, drums and xylophones with their mouths. Sometimes the music sounds like chaotic noise. Other times it can be quite melodic. The orchestra has been featured on pieces by CNN, the BBC, “60 Minutes”, National Public Radio and television reports in Japan, Denmark, Germany and other countries.

High-End Elephant Entertainment in Thailand

elephant round-up

Natasha Daly wrote in National Geographic: “I'm sitting on the edge of an infinity pool on the hilly Thai side of Thailand’s border with Myanmar, at a resort where rooms average more than a thousand dollars a night. Out past the pool, elephants roam in a lush valley. Sitting next to me is 20-year-old Stephanie, who asked not to use her last name. She’s Dutch and French, Tokyo born and raised, and a student at the University of Michigan. Her cosmopolitan bac kilograms round and pretty face make for a perfect cocktail of aspiration — she’s exactly the kind of Instagrammer who makes it as an influencer. That is, someone who has a large enough following to attract sponsors to underwrite posts and, in turn, travel, wardrobes, and bank accounts. In 2018, brands — fashion, travel, tech, and more — spent an estimated $1.6 billion on social media advertising by influencers. [Source: Natasha Daly, National Geographic, June 2019]

“Stephanie has been here, at the Anantara Golden Triangle Elephant Camp & Resort, before. This time, in a fairly standard influencer-brand arrangement, she’ll have a picnic with elephants and post about it to her growing legion of more than 25,000 Instagram followers. In exchange, she gets hundreds of dollars off the nightly rate.

“At Anantara the fields are green, and during the day at least, many of the resort’s 22 elephants are tethered on ropes more than a hundred feet long so they can move around and socialize. Nevertheless, they’re expected to let guests touch them and do yoga beside them.

“After Stephanie's elephant picnic, I watch her edit the day’s hundreds of photos. She selects an image with her favorite elephant, Bo. She likes it, she says, because she felt a connection with Bo and thinks that will come across. She posts it at 9:30 p.m. — the time she estimates the largest number of her followers will be online. She includes a long caption, summing it up as “my love story with this incredible creature,” and the hashtag #stopelephantriding. Immediately, likes from followers stream in — more than a thousand, as well as comments with heart-eyed emoji. Anantara is out of reach for anyone but the wealthy — or prominent influencers. Anyone else seeking a similar experience might do a Google search for, say, “Thailand elephant sanctuary.”

Low -End Elephant Entertainment in Thailand

in Ayuthaya

Natasha Daly wrote in National Geographic: ““Of all the silently suffering animals I saw in pools and pens around the world, two in particular haunt me: an elephant and a tiger. They lived in the same facility, Samut Prakan Crocodile Farm and Zoo, about 15 miles south of Bangkok. The elephant, Gluay Hom, four years old, was kept under a stadium. The aging tiger, Khai Khem, 22, spent his days on a short chain in a photo studio. Both had irrefutable signs of suffering: The emaciated elephant had a bent, swollen leg hanging in the air and a large, bleeding sore at his temple. His eyes were rolled back in his head. The tiger had a dental abscess so severe that the infection was eating through the bottom of his jaw.

“When I contacted the owner of the facility, Uthen Youngprapakorn, to ask about these animals, he said the fact that they hadn’t died proved that the facility was caring for them properly. He then threatened a lawsuit.

“Six months after Kirsten and I returned from Thailand, we asked Ryn Jirenuwat, our Bangkok-based Thai interpreter, to check on Gluay Hom and Khai Khem. She went to Samut Prakan and watched them for hours, sending photos and video. Gluay Hom was still alive, still standing in the same stall, leg still bent at an unnatural angle. The elephants next to him were skin and bones. Khai Khem was still chained by his neck to a hook in the floor. He just stays in his dark corner, Jirenuwat texted, and when he hears people coming, he twists on his chain and turns his back to them. “Like he just wants to be swallowed by the wall.”

Elephant Entertainers in Thailand

Douglas H. Chadwick wrote in National Geographic, At nine years old, Prathida has yet to experience a day of hard work. Another reason she's called a princess is that she's a budding beauty and seems to know it. To label her spoiled would be unfair, but no one would deny she is a little on the willful side — insistent, curious, with a lot of bounce in her gait, and very, very noisy. [Source: Douglas H. Chadwick, National Geographic, October 2005]

"She's the one you hear trumpeting on our CD," says Richard Lair, an FIO adviser to the center who's earned the informal title Acharn Chaang — Professor Elephant — during a lifetime spent studying them. Lair is talking about the center's recording of elephants playing along to Beethoven's Sixth Symphony with 50 school kids and a marching band, a rendition that makes up in enthusiasm for whatever notes go astray. Like many zoos and camps, the center encourages the elephants to paint, but, Lair says, sound and smell, rather than sight, are their most important senses. So he and Dave Soldier, a visiting neuroscientist from New York's Columbia University, started the world's first elephant orchestra, complete with jumbo-size drums, gongs, chimes, and a xylophone. "How large is this orchestra of yours?" a visitor asks. Lair has his reply ready to go: "Well, by weight, I'd guess three times the size of the Berlin Philharmonic." The straight answer is about 12 elephants.

"Once, while I was conducting," he continues, "we were coming to the part for the big gong, and a mahout forgot to hand his elephant the mallet. That elephant reached up and tapped him on the knee, as if to say, “Hey, heads up. I'm on!'" Singling out Prathida for praise, Lair adds, "She's perfect keeping up with the music. She'll trumpet to accompany a violin and chirp when she hears a cello."

Tough Life of Elephants in the Tourism and Entertainment Industries in Thailand

Douglas H. Chadwick wrote in National Geographic, Ten feet tall, four tons thick, and around 70 years old when we meet, Boon Num used to work for the Suay people of eastern Thailand, traditionally the country's foremost catchers and trainers of wild elephants. Getting fresh stock from the wild is considered more expedient than breeding elephants in captivity because pregnancy keeps a captive female out of work for 20 to 22 months. Boon Num's job was to chase free-roaming herds in Cambodia until one of the two mahouts on his back could lasso the quarry, usually a baby elephant, with a rope of braided water buffalo hide. Boon Num would then hold off the mother and other relatives trying to come to the tethered animal's aid. Afterward the captive would be placed in a "crush" — a tightly confining pen — and subjected to a will-breaking ceremony called phajaan, still practiced in places today. The taming process can be brutal, involving days of torment with spike-tipped poles until the elephant learns to move in response. [Source: Douglas H. Chadwick, National Geographic, October 2005]

Boo Num’s “life story can be traced through documents that must be filed after an elephant is taken from the wild and each time it is sold....After his career of capturing wild elephants, Boon Num abruptly found himself in another part of the country with a new owner, a new mahout, and a new job: logging. Though Thailand outlawed further cutting of its forests in 1989, clandestine logging continues in remote areas, particularly near the Myanmar border. Hauling timber required less speed but every bit of Boon Num's power — and it took a toll. Injuries from toppling trees, runaway logs, and falls on steep terrain are common. Once, Boon Num lost the end of his tail to a bite by a co-worker — a frequent occurrence among elephants thrown together in random groups. One rear foot also became torn and infected; no longer able to work, he was at risk of being rendered for parts like an old truck. Instead he changed hands again and wound up in Pattaya.

After Boon Num's leg healed (it took six months and three veterinarians), [his owner Phairat] Chaiyakaham says, "the mahouts did not want to get up on him because he can be moody. Then I got the right man." That's Gas Pasuk, 24, a Suay handler who sits atop Boon Num during shows and takes tourists for rides on him."Boon Num is quite gentle," Pasuk insists. "But he needs the sweet talk to soothe him.”

Ban Ta Klang — Thailand’s Elephant-Training Village

Natasha Daly wrote in National Geographic: “In Ban Ta Klang, a tiny town in eastern Thailand, modest homes dot the crimson earth. In front of each is a wide, bamboo platform for sitting, sleeping, and watching television. “But the first thing I notice is the elephants. Some homes have one, others as many as five. Elephants stand under tarps or sheet metal roofs or trees. Some are together, mothers and babies, but most are alone. Nearly all the elephants wear ankle chains or hobbles — cuffs binding their front legs together. Dogs and chickens weave among the elephants’ legs, sending up puffs of red dust. [Source: Natasha Daly, National Geographic, June 2019]

“Ban Ta Klang — known as Elephant Village — is ground zero in Thailand for training and trading captive elephants. “House elephants,” Sri Somboon says, gesturing as he turns down his TV. Next to his outdoor platform, a two-month-old baby elephant runs around his mother. Somboon points across the road to the third elephant in his charge, a three-year-old male tethered to a tree. He’s wrenching his head back and forth and thrashing his trunk around. It looks as if he’s going out of his mind. He’s in the middle of his training, Somboon says, and is getting good at painting. He’s already been sold, and when his training is finished, he’ll start working at a tourist camp down south.

“Ban Ta Klang and the surrounding area, part of Surin Province, claim to be the source of more than half of Thailand’s 3,800 captive elephants. Long before the flood of tourists, it was the center of the elephant trade; the animals were caught in the wild and tamed for use transporting logs. Now, every November, hundreds of elephants from here are displayed, bought, and sold in the province’s main town, Surin.

AFP reported: “Balanced precariously on hind legs, two-year-old Ploy holds a ball in her trunk and flings it towards a hoop, one of many tricks she is learning in Ban Ta Klang, where young elephants are "broken" to interact with the tens of millions of tourists who visit Thailand every year, many eager to capture social media-worthy encounters of the kingdom's national animal playing sports, dancing and even painting. [Source: AFP, December 23, 2019]

“Villagers in Ban Ta Klang who have been working with the large, gentle animals for generations say taming is necessary for safety reasons and that the force is not excessive. "We do not raise them to hurt them... if they are not stubborn, we do nothing to them," said mahout Charin, as he stroked Ploy's head affectionately and spoke of her as part of his family. Charin makes about $350 a month in a profession that was handed down from his father and grandfather. "I have always lived with them," he added. But animal welfare advocates argue the taming technique — where babies are removed from the care of fiercely devoted mothers at the age of two — is cruel and outdated.

Harsh-Elephant Training in Thailand

Natasha Daly wrote in National Geographic: “One evening I sit with Jakkrawan Homhual and Wanchai Sala-ngam. Both 33, they’ve been best friends since childhood. About half the people in Ban Ta Klang who care for elephants, including Homhual, don’t own them. They’re paid a modest salary by a rich owner to breed and train baby elephants for entertainment. As night falls, thousands of termites swarm us, attracted to the single bulb hanging above the bamboo platform. Our conversation turns to elephant training. [Source: Natasha Daly, National Geographic, June 2019]

“Phajaan is the traditional — and brutal — days- or weeks-long process of breaking a young elephant’s spirit. It has long been used in Thailand and throughout Southeast Asia to tame wild elephants, which still account for many of the country’s captives. Under phajaan, elephants are bound with ropes, confined in tight wooden structures, starved, and beaten repeatedly with bullhooks, nails, and hammers until their will is crushed. The extent to which phajaan persists in its harshest form is unclear. Since 2012, the government has been cracking down on the illegal import of elephants taken from the forests of neighboring Myanmar, Thailand’s main source of wild-caught animals.

“I ask the men how baby elephants born in captivity are broken and trained. When a baby is about two years old, they say, mahouts tie its mother to a tree and slowly drag the baby away. Once separated, the baby is confined. Using a bullhook on its ear, they teach the baby to move: left, right, turn, stop. To teach an elephant to sit, Sala-ngam says, “we tie up the front legs. One mahout will use a bullhook at the back. The other will pull a rope on the front legs.” He adds: “To train the elephant, you need to use the bullhook so the elephant will know.”

Helping Abused Entertainment Elephants

Reuters reported: Entertaining locals and tourists has become a life or death business for elephants and their keepers, explained Sam Fang, author of Thai Elephants: Tourism Ambassadors of Thailand. "They had to cope with the ban on logging, and deforestation," Fang said. "First jobless, second no food. Wham!" Tourism filled the gaps, he said. "The better elephants got themselves a job as taxis. The intelligent elephants got themselves jobs as show elephants. The smarter ones became artists," he said jokingly.

Elephant conservationists such as Sangduen "Lek" Chailert worry that captive elephants, considered beasts of burden in Thailand, have little protection from abuse if their owners work them all day to bring in more tourist dollars. "Elephants used to be transport for the king, they were very important in history. Today they've just become subservient," said Chailert. "They turned from a holy animal to work like slaves all day. And at night they're chained," she said. "They've made elephants into machines for making money."

Simple as it sounds, the first step towards improving the lot of Asia's captive elephants is ascertaining where they are, said elephant expert Richard Lair. Lair has proposed micro-chipping domestic elephants to prevent abuse through better monitoring, and reduce horse-trading among owners. "The reason we don't know about deaths, births, illegal trade is because the registration process is so inefficient. And the wild are not even counted," said Lair, the Director of the Thai Elephant Conservation Centre in Chiang Mai.

"A compromise will have to be hammered out," he said. In the meantime, working elephants just have to hope the tourists keep coming, he said. "The worst case scenario is that the global economy goes into a recession, tourist numbers plummet and, a large number have no gainful employment."

Real Elephant Sanctuaries in Thailand

AFP reported: Of the 220 elephant parks identified across the country, even if many promise ethical tourism, "only a dozen ensure truly satisfactory living conditions", according to World Animal Protection (WAP). It is working with ChangChill, a small organisation near Chiang Mai, bordered by a river in the middle of rice terraces. In a few months, it changed its methods to give elephants more space, fewer interactions, and an environment resembling life in the wild. "We don't force them to do what they wouldn't instinctively do," says director Supakorn Thanaseth. “As a result, they are "less sick, calmer". “The risk of accidents with tourists has decreased as the animals are less stressed, though mahouts still have a hook in a bag for emergencies.[Source: AFP, December 23, 2019]

“ChangChill hopes to become profitable in the current high season, but it will only be able to receive around 40 tourists a day to visit its six elephants as part of its aim to put the creatures first. That is a drop in the bucket when Thailand has nearly 4,000 "domesticated" elephants.

“Thai authorities are reluctant to reintroduce them into natural habitats, as advocated by some NGOs, because of a lack of space and potential conflict with humans. The compromise, some argue, is to better regulate the sector and improve standards. But there is little impetus to enact more stringent rules that would cut into the Thai tourism industry, which welcomed more than 38 million visitors this year.

“A committee of several animal welfare associations submitted recommendations to the government in 2018 advocating stricter controls for elephants in captivity. But according to activist Sovaida Salwala from Friends of the Asian Elephants, an NGO who helped compile the report, their requests "remain unanswered so far".

“In fact, there is some evidence the animals' situation is getting worse. Schmidt-Burbach said their last research in 2015 found some 1,771 elephants whose welfare was in question. He explained: "There are 357 more elephants in poor conditions compared to our 2010 study."

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons

Text Sources: Animal Diversity Web animaldiversity.org ; National Geographic, Live Science, Natural History magazine, David Attenborough books, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Smithsonian magazine, Discover magazine, The New Yorker, Time, Reuters, Associated Press, AFP, Lonely Planet Guides, Wikipedia, The Guardian, Top Secret Animal Attack Files website and various books and other publications.

Last updated December 2024