Thailand elephants, moms sharing & reformed circus

Recent media articles about animals have included one sad story about Asian elephants in Thailand and one idiotic story (the kindest way to describe it) about another Asian elephant . . . and a heartwarming story about inter-species kindness involving two moms with infants – one, an orangutan and the other, a human.

I’ll build up to the good news . . . !

In my reading, Asian elephants get much less coverage than African elephants, and their lives appear to be much less “wild animal” than working animal.  What a shame.

In parts of Thailand, for instance, their main activity seems to be carting tourists around -- a pathetic come-down for such intelligent and majestic creatures.  Adding insult to injury, more elephants there (an est. 3,800 of them) are “privately owned” captive workers than elephants who live in the wild (est. 3,600).  Still worse, owned elephants and their offspring are passed down through family generations, for servitude forever.

Picture this: outside the houses in a small village, one or more elephants are chained up, much as cars are seen outside homes here.  It fits: those elephants are used as wage-earning vehicles. . . for tourists.

Except that now, the country’s tourism industry has not yet rebounded from the pandemic so elephants are out of work, while still needing to be fed and cared for. Returned to their owners’ villages from resort areas where they gave rides, the elephants are now idle – and hungry, according to the newspaper story linked below.

This state of things has fed the already-ongoing debate about proper treatment of elephants here.  Although owners are struggling to feed them, supplemented by government help, they’re also skeptical about selling their elephants to others,  who may not treat them well.  At the same time the elephants are living in even more undesirable conditions than serving as live tourist rides. 

A natural habitat for elephants already exists, but because villagers have become so dependent on “their” animals, activists’ arguments have not gained support.  Yet.             

https://tinyurl.com/wcame5r  &   https://tinyurl.com/46hkbe8f     

Too tiny a triumph

I’m as much a fan of happy media stories about animals as the next animal advocate.  But . . . the big to-do about the Berlin Zoo elephant who can peel her own bananas: come on!  Whoever marvels at that must have no idea of just how intelligent elephants are and have been, for millennia.

If that’s the greatest thing this elephant has been extolled for doing, it just means she’s been sorely underutilized – starting with being held captive in a zoo cage.  I wonder whether those who herald this feat can peel their own                                                                                                              bananas.              

https://tinyurl.com/2m69xaby

Moms share how-to’s   

Finally, and best: the story about mom-to-mom kindness at the Metro Richmond Zoo.  There, after an orangutan gave birth, she didn’t know how to nurse her baby and zoo staff feared Zoey’s second baby would also need to be hand-raised by them instead of starting life au natural.

But a staff member who had recently given birth agreed with a request to bring her own baby in and demonstrate to Zoey how to nurse.  She sat outside Zoey’s cage, bared her breast and fed her son – sometimes talking and often pointing to what happened where.  The other mom watched carefully, and soon afterward, began nursing her own baby.           https://tinyurl.com/dups6mvd  

New-style circus on tap

The headline and first sentence say it all: “Ringling circus is returning.  Lions, tigers and Dumbo are not.  Shuttered since 2017, Ringling Brothers will bring back its circus in September 2023, but this time there will be no animal acts.”

The myriad animal activists who protested for so long against demeaning animal acts and cruel training, transport and living conditions for animals can rejoice – and move on to other animal-welfare issues.    https://tinyurl.com/meumnsk8 

 

                                                                                   image: Philadelphia Museum of Art

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