Lifestyle
Wrongly treated as beasts of burden because of their size, tamed elephants live in quiet suffering and desperation, often undergoing permanent physical damage. Radhika Singh, who worked at the Elephant World sanctuary, gives a first-hand view of a pachyderm's life in captivity
Updated : Dec 05, 2017, 02:25 PM IST
Elephants can't be domesticated like cats and dogs. They are wild and have to be tamed in a process designed to break their spirit and make them completely submissive to their owners. The taming process and the work they are made to do makes an elephant that was previously wild, free and proud into one that lives in quiet suffering and desperation.
Most elephants in captivity are taken from their mothers at just two or three years old, when they are the most malleable, and forced into cages so small they can barely move. One can observe some older elephants swinging their bodies from side to side without pause, a habit they developed when this movement was the only one they could physically make. It is impossible to take a step forward or to the side or lie down in these cages; the size also prevents elephants from moving when they are whipped or beaten. It has been recorded that some elephants refuse all food during these "training" months in an attempt to starve themselves to death. After they are tamed, most are forced into a long, toiling, life in one of three industries: logging, trekking and begging.
When logging, elephants are made to work up to 16 hours a day, carrying loads in areas of the forest too dense for trucks to go through. Branches shred their ears into droopy strips of skin and impale their eyes, rendering them blind. Trekking is when elephants walk through forests with seats on their backs, giving rides to foreigners. Surprisingly to most, Asian elephants can only comfortably carry 100 kg on their backs; they have not been bred over many centuries to carry huge amounts like horses have. The seat itself is already 50 kg, and once two people are placed on it, the combined weight is literally backbreaking. The arch of an elephant's back is supposed to be the highest point of its body, but a trekking elephant has a back that is so bent out of shape that it is completely horizontal.
Being too small for logging or trekking, mostly baby elephants are used for begging. Begging usually takes place in cities, and is when people pay the mahout a small amount of money to feed the elephant a bunch of bananas or take a picture with it. Most elephants start out very young — the cuter, the better— and turn into nervous, trembling wrecks after a few years of begging. Elephants can hear vibrations up to 16 km away — that's how they communicate — and the chaos of city streets overwhelms them. It's physically hard, too. The soles of their feet are often completely burnt because of the scorching asphalt they are made to walk on. Some get hit by cars and are handicapped for life. Fed in tiny increments for many years, many babies grow into stunted adults.
Elephants are one of the most self-aware, creative animals that walk (or swim) this earth. They can distinguish between different languages, prefer certain types of music and have favourite foods. Their memories are long and deep. Numerous stories and videos have also documented their incredible sense of empathy. They comfort each other during stressful periods such as sickness or fear, mourn their dead and go out of their way to avoid hurting other animals or humans. But the life of a lonely elephant in captivity is very different. It is a great folly to assume that elephants are too unintelligent to understand what they have lost and can never experience again.