Every year, Thailand is flooded by tourists, for its beautiful tropical beaches, decadent palaces, and mysterious temples.
Outside the cities, you’ll find incredible forests where guides take you on tours. Many of these guides also offer elephant rides.
For tourists, it’s an opportunity to do something different, a moment to remember. But what many don’t realize is what these elephants have to endure daily. Abuse, exhaustion, inhumane conditions.
Now a report has been released of a baby elephant collapsing from exhaustion in Thailand. He was tied to his mother who was forced to carry tourists around in Pattaya. This was reported by Daily Mail.
Content related to elephant tourism in Thailand.
More information on the treatment of elephants in the tourism industry.
Specific details about the incident in Pattaya.
100,000 elephants were confined in Thailand over the past century, according to Eco-Business. In 2007, there were 3,456 and today they are endangered.
The incident where the 1-year-old elephant was tied to its mother’s neck with a rope took place in eastern Thailand, in Pattaya.
‘Baby elephant completely exhausted’
“Many baby elephants are tethered to their mothers while she carries tourists on her back in the scorching sun and suffers tremendously,” the observer, a Filipino guest worker who works as a teacher in Myanmar, was vacationing with friends in Pattaya. “This baby was so exhausted, and you could see the mother trying to prop the little one up,” she says.
A park spokesperson where the incident took place told Daily Mail that the elephants are well taken care of.
“All elephants are healthy. If they have a problem, they are assisted by veterinarians. All babies are healthy here,” he says.
Tourist rides are a nightmare for elephants
Riding an elephant may be a special experience, but for the elephant, it’s a nightmare, The Dodo reports.
“Tourists think it’s not so bad to ride an elephant,” Jan Schmidt-Burbach of World Animal Protection tells The Dodo. “But the harsh reality is that the elephants are abused until they lose their dignity and carry people. Because normally, elephants don’t carry people,” he says.
“The elephants ride around with tourists and perform tricks without attacking the tourists, because they are ‘broken’ from birth and punished with extreme torture devices if they don’t do as asked,” a National Geographic study reports.
A tweet about elephant shelters.
“Wild elephants won’t let humans ride on top of them. So in order to tame a wild elephant, it is tortured as a baby to completely break its spirit. The process is called Phajaan, or ‘the crush’ https://t.co/N7QsThwiXQ
— Marrysa Tunjung Sari ? (@poeticpicture) August 15, 2018
I didn’t know what elephants had to go through to please tourists. Is this really necessary?
Please share this to raise awareness about elephant abuse and stop this.
