Humane Nature

Ep 2: The Truth About Riding Elephants in Chiang Mai, Thailand

September 29, 2021 Stacia Season 1 Episode 2
Humane Nature
Ep 2: The Truth About Riding Elephants in Chiang Mai, Thailand
Show Notes Transcript

Should we be riding elephants in Chiang Mai, Thailand? Here's what science and research say about the effects of tourists riding elephants and elephant tourism in Chiang Mai.

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Sources

Bansiddhi et al. Changing trends in elephant camp management in northern Thailand and implications for welfare. Zoological Science. 23 November 2018. https://peerj.com/articles/5996/?td=fb&fbclid=IwAR1_5Dvow1vFsAnJdnNAtEPyiPcqJJvN230njEBMrN1kd7TDS6Ko8pH7XZ0&utm_source=TrendMD&utm_campaign=PeerJ_TrendMD_0&utm_medium=TrendMD 

Cohn, Jeffrey P. Do Elephants Belong in Zoos? BioScience V56 #9. 1 September 2006. https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/56/9/714/262884 

 Facts About Elephants. Elephant Nature Park. https://www.elephantnaturepark.org/about/facts-about-elephants/

Laws et al. The Elephant Tourism Business. CAB International. Print. 2021. https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=XTELEAAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA64&dq=impacts+of+elephant+riding&ots=DbEkQrd2Rv&sig=ewESubVhoPDcOsBJRBM_Cm2Kyjc#v=onepage&q=impacts%20of%20elephant%20riding&f=false 

Laws, Scott, & Koldowski. The Routledge Handbook of Tourism. Routledge. Print. 2019. https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781351025102-7/impacts-elephant-tourism-thailand-eric-laws-noel-scott-john-koldowski 

 Not Riding! Useful Information. Green Elephant Sanctuary Park Phuket.https://www.green-elephantsanctuarypark.com/not-riding/ 

Rizzolo & Bradshaw. Wild Animals and Leisure. Routledge. Print. 2018. https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781315457413-7/human-leisure-elephant-breakdown-jessica-bell-rizzolo-gay-bradshaw 

 Seaworld Parks & Entertainment. All About Elephants.https://seaworld.org/animals/all-about/elephants/ 

 WWF. Top 10 Facts About Elephants. World Wildlife Fund. https://www.wwf.org.uk/learn/fascinating-facts/elephants 

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humane nature is an animal tourism podcast with discussions about animal abuse, injury and medicine. listener discretion is advised. Welcome back to human nature. I'm your host stacia. Thank you everyone who listened to my first ever episode. I'm so glad you enjoyed it. Thank you so much for all of the great reviews personally sent to me over social media. If you guys don't mind, please leave a review on Spotify or Apple podcasts or wherever you're listening. That would really help me out. So I thought from now on, we would open our podcast with some current wildlife tourism news, because a lot of these things are overshadowed by political news or you know things involving people rather than the animals. So, today is September 27. And in the last week or so, we have our first topic here, hyena cubs have been infected with toxoplasmosis. That is usually what's involved with cats. Cats will pass it on to rats. And when what happens when rats get toxoplasmosis, they become bolder and less fearful of their predators, which in their cases, the cats, making them easier prey these your targets for cats to catch. So this is something that's usually spread by cats and is the big reason why pregnant women are not supposed to be scooping cat litter boxes. So it's super interesting that hyena cubs in Africa have been infected with toxoplasmosis and are becoming bolder around lions, which are their predators, their big cat predators, resulting in higher death numbers. So this is super unfortunate because hyenas have a really difficult time breeding and their their offspring usually die fairly young. So this is something that scientists are looking into now to see how this has happened and how we can fix it. In addition, urban development and sea level rise in Florida may lead to loss of protected habitat for Florida Panthers and bears by 2070. This is something that we can still reverse. This is something to put on your radar and talk to, you know, politicians talk to, you know, whoever will listen about this urban development in Florida, which is a really big problem down there. I used to live there, its urban development and taking over old protected land and, and bits of nature is a really big problem. So we want to protect our Florida Panthers and the bears that live down there. So that is something that we can still reverse up at this point. Some happier news. Turtles in Lake Simcoe near Toronto, Canada have been kept safe from developing roads due to inexpensive road barriers connected to crossing structures. And these are brand new, different barriers that have never been built before and have been developed by scientists out there. Because many of these turtles and tortoises need to cross these new road areas in order to lay eggs find food, different kinds of things, turtles and tortoises do migrate so this has protected a lot of them from being hit by cars on these new roads, which is awesome. Next thing over 1500 wild horses are in the process of being relocated from Northern Colorado and the Jackson mountains in Nevada in the United States due to overpopulation and drought. So their population has exploded recently. Similar to feral cat colonies, these wild horse and feral horse colonies around you know the the desert areas and mountainous areas of the US are causing some real environmental impact some negative environmental impact. So, these horses will be kept at the US Bureau of Land Management until they can either be relocated or adopted. This overpopulation has made resources really scarce. So, many of them who are not will not be adopted, the ones who will be relocated, will be going through, you know, spay neuter and release programs similar what we do with cats so this will help protect overpopulation in the future. Finally, last on our list 1000s of Eastern bar tailed godwits have been welcomed back to New Zealand to the sound of Cathedral bells. After making one of the longest avian migration flights in the world, this is so awesome. I laughed, and my heart felt so happy after reading this. These birds have flown 6200 miles or 10,000 kilometers to reach New Zealand. And then they flew from the Arctic to New Zealand. So the country celebrated by tolling Cathedral bells welcoming in these new birds. And you know what, and many people were praying for them as well, which is, which is really beautiful. So today's topic, if you didn't gather from the title, we will be talking about riding elephants in Chiang Mai, Thailand. So we're going to focus specifically on Asian elephants in riding elephants, specifically in the Chiang Mai, Thailand area. And I will put another content warning here if you didn't hear the one at the very beginning of the show. This topic does get a little gruesome, a little sad. We're gonna be talking about animal abuse and pain and mistreatment. So if you are very sensitive about this topic, I will not be offended if you skip forward and in this episode, or skip this episode altogether. And I will see you in two weeks when the next episode comes out. So let's talk about the history of elephants and humans, especially in Southeast Asia. They have or we have I'm a human ...elephants and humans have a very complicated history. So elephants, especially in Southeast Asia, have been used in labor and entertainment, despised as agricultural pests as they, you know, walk through and eat, fencing, gardens, farmlands, things like that, and also worshipped as gods in different parts of the world. So that's a really big range of how we're treating Asian elephants. So in Thailand, specifically, Thailand's forestry industry is dependent or was dependent on mahoots and their elephants. And you'll hear me say that word a lot mahoots. Those are the bonded trainers and caretakers of elephants in Thailand. So it's a very cultural and historical thing that goes back, you know, hundreds of years as long as they've had elephants they've had their mahoot caretakers. However, the forestry industry, especially with elephants was banned in 1989 due to flooding from deforestation, so the country banned it. And this left many mahoots without income, and left caring for extremely expensive elephants. You can imagine how much an elephant can eat in a day. So these mahoots, a lot of them first turned to street shows and begging with their elephants in order to earn money from from sympathetic tourists. And a lot of this was happening more in southern Thailand in the Bangkok region and we will talk about elephant bagging. In a future episode we will talk about that specifically. But today we're gonna focus on the elephant riding. The begging was quickly banned, as it was deemed distract, disruptive, disruptive and dangerous I was gonna say destructive Well, I guess it was it was destructive as well. But disruptive and dangerous to people. This wasn't necessarily for the elephants' benefit. And many of these elephants were then eventually sold to business men and inexperienced mahoots for tourism. Specifically, people noticed that tourists coming into Thailand, this was in you know, 1990s, early 2000s, where we were becoming more connected via the internet. and international travel was more was exploding more. So a lot of Western tourists were coming to Thailand, and were obviously extremely interested in elephants. So businessmen and businessmen employed some inexperienced, inexperienced Mahood. So these were people who were in charge of caring for Elephants that didn't necessarily have the know how or the cultural training to do so. So the Asian elephant or also known around there, the Indian elephant is endangered. There were there are now under 30,000 individuals left in the world in the world under 30,000 left in the world, whereas there were over 100,000 at the start of the 20th century. And of those 30,000, 3 to 4000 of those are left in Thailand, and half of those three to 4000 elephants are domesticated, and about 20% of these are in the Chiang Mai Province. So we're looking at 600 to 800 elephants in Chiang Mai alone. So that's a lot of really large, large animals to be living in that one province in Thailand. So if you're going to Chiang Mai, chances are you're going to see an elephant or at least a place advertising that they have elephants nearby. So elephants are a huge part of Thai history and culture, especially in Chiangmai. They are seen in historical art, historic, you know, pieces of literature and poetry. They were widely used in transportation for a while they were used in war. They were they were ridden and used in war. And then and still currently, they are still used in ceremonies, especially royal ceremonies in Chiang Mai. And actually, the seal of the city of Chiang Mai actually has an elephant on it. So that just shows how important elephants are to to this province in China, or China, this province, I'm sorry, this province in Thailand. Elephant tourism is said to be the only viable way to sustain elephants lives and indigenous mahoots' income at this moment. So this is a very complicated subject, a very complicated issue. Because in order to improve elephants lives and livelihood a lot of the times, especially Western efforts to do so are putting indigenous peoples and Mahoots' income and livelihood at risk. So we have to come up with ways to work with the mahoots with the locals and the local tribes and everything in order to, you know, make sure nobody is severely suffering, including the elephants. So let's talk about why we don't want to ride elephants. I don't think it's any news to you if you're if you're listening to this, that riding elephants is kind of deemed a travel No, no. And an ethical an ethical issue in in Thailand, it's becoming more people are becoming more aware of this. And the three main reasons for this is the elephant's training, their physical anatomy, and their mental well being and elephant natural behaviors. So let's hit all three of those today. Historically, the training of elephants in Thailand has been deemed extremely unethical by Western standards. This is the historical way to do it in Thailand. But you know, especially West... by Western standards we are, you know, you see videos and things of this and it just breaks your heart. You can't imagine why anybody would want to treat an elephant this way. But this is the way it's always been done, and which is why it's a lot more difficult to stop it. You know, it's pretty deeply rooted in their history here. So I'm sorry if I butcher this pronunciation, but in Thai, it's called the phajaan, which roughly translates to the separation ceremony. And in the ceremony, the baby elephant is taken from its mother. The mother is then usually killed or sold off to work in like the logging industry, because but often are killed because they're so distraught from their baby being taken from them and become violent. And then this baby is kept in a small shed, where all four of its legs are stretched out. Like pretty much spread eagle as far as they will go and tied to wooden posts. The baby elephant is then beaten, especially with bull hooks, which are these huge metal hooks that are capable of penetrating and elephant's extremely thick skin. So they're beaten and they are shouted at denied food and water and this has this happens for pretty much non stop for a few weeks, up to up to a few weeks. So they do this until the baby elephant is completely what they call broken, they are completely fearful of people they stop trying to fight they become this is where they learn their fear of bull hooks for later training. And then when this is done, the mahoot who will be bonded to this elephant the mahoot does not partake in the beating or or the starvation or anything like that, but appears as the Savior to the elephant because the elephant does not see this one person hurting him. And this Mahoot is the one who unties him brings him or I say him, but it's usually females bringing the baby food and water it's first sip of water, its first bite of food, it unties him and you know, and this creates an emotional bond to that mahoot. You know, like Stockholm Syndrome, it's basically elephant Stockholm Syndrome. So then this elephant is bonded to this mahoot. And this mahoot is who will be caring for this elephant for the rest of its life. This causes a lot of issues, obviously a lot of mental and emotional issues for elephants, they're extremely intelligent animals. And, you know, it's it's really heartbreaking. And I'm not going to include any in the show notes or on my Instagram or anything. But if you want to, you can find videos and pictures of this to get a better idea of what's going on. But I will give you huge warning about doing that. It's really heartbreaking. And that image will be forever seared in your brain. I have seen it and it's it's pretty devastating. And I don't recommend going to look at it unless you you know, really need that image to understand what these elephants are going through. So that is the training that these babies go through. Let's talk about an actual elephants an Asian elephant's anatomy and why this prevents from like riding elephants from being ethical. So even if an elephant was, you know, maybe bred and not gone through the ceremony not taken from its mother not like, let's imagine that that first part that first like separation ceremony never happened with this elephant. So let's talk about its anatomy and why it does not bode well for an elephant to be carrying people and for people to be riding them. So an elephant's anatomy, especially of its neck and spine, is built to lift weight with its trunk and its head, not to carry weight on its back. And let's compare an elephant's spinal anatomy to that of a horse which we know can be ridden no problem by people, especially with good training. So the vertebrae of an elephant actually point upwards like humans, and are curved in a way where, let's say it's curved upwards on the back and then goes back down towards the head kind of like in a parabola shape. Horses vertebrae, in comparison are straight across their back or as straight as possible. They're, you know, a little curved up the neck and everything. But on the back itself, they're fairly straight to aid in fast running back strength to be able to turn quickly and further back in their spine to be able to take that amount of pressure. Whereas an elephant is not running very quickly, at least not very often. And it's just not built to do that. The vertebrae of an elephant also has these bony protrusions on them similar to human spines so if you've ever seen a skeleton like a human skeleton, you know like hanging up in your, your science classroom or anything in high school. If you picture a human spine, they're pretty bony. They have I mean, they're made of bones but they they have kind of these sharp protrusions on them and that's how they fit together. And an elephant's vertebrae are very similar to that whereas a horse's vertebrae are smoothed over. And the difference between the two means that putting weight on a horse's back is not going to hurt their, their spine because those those bones are very smoothed over. Whereas, I don't know if you've ever played you know, horsey with a toddler or anything, you have someone sitting on your back, after a while, you can really feel those pressure points of where that person is sitting on your back, even if they're not particularly heavy. And that is because our spines are kind of pointed and jagged. Whereas a horse's is smooth, and an elephant's vertebrae are similar to ours so that the sheer amount of weight the multiple tons of these huge seats that they put on these elephants for people to sit and ride are extremely painful on their spine. And their their backs just simply aren't built to to hold that amount of weight. In addition to that, basically in biology, the larger an animal is, the slower their metabolism has to be. And because of an elephant's extremely slow metabolism, injuries that it sustains, can take an extremely long time to heal. Like I'm talking months to years to heal, depending on what kind of injury it is. So these huge seats these huge like metal or wooden seats sitting on their backs. Not only are they going to hurt their spine, potentially leading to neurological issues. It's not unheard of for an elephant who has been, you know, doing these rides and everything for a very long time to suffer paralysis or numbness in its back legs. Because of this, it can cause other kinds of neurological pain. But also because of the way their backs are curved. A lot of the times these seats are cutting into their skin and is causing lesions, blisters, cuts, abrasions, things like that. But because an elephant's metabolism is so slow these abrasions and sores and whatever is happening can take an extremely long time to heal. And if you have an open sore for that amount of time, especially for an animal like an elephant where they can't stay in a sterile environment forever, that can cause potentially deadly infections because they just can't heal as quickly as we can. So they're also a lot of times walking constantly with this added weight on pavement rather than the you know soft grass or dirt as they would be in the wild. And this pavement often causes really awful sores and lesions on their feet as well especially with the added weight. Which, you know, you think of an elephant you know, it's walking around, it's potentially, you know, urinating, defecating on its legs during the day walking through walking through dirt through mud, whatever, if it has those opens wounds on its feet. wounds on elephant's feet are extremely deadly, they can kill an elephant fairly quickly even if they receive medical treatment. So this is something that zoos and and rescues and sanctuaries have to look out for they're they're constantly checking and maintaining elephants feet to avoid these kinds of injuries. The third point is an elephant's natural behavior and how this is affected by working as as a tourism elephant, especially in the riding. So elephants are extremely social elephants. They're extremely social animals. Elephants are extremely social animals, especially females, not as much the males the bulls usually are solitary. But females are usually the ones who were trained to do the riding and everything because they are much more docile and less prone to aggression compared to the bulls. So in the wild, female elephants live in large herds that frequently communicate, play and they even mourn their dead. they mourn the loss of babies, when it happens, they mourn the loss of their elders. And they're constantly communicating in different ways. You never see a female elephant, a female Asian elephant by itself, never ever, they're always in large herds. And so if They're solitary and forced to work all the time. They're not going to get that kind of socialization. And that may not seem like a big deal to some people. But I bet you can relate a little bit after COVID after being in isolation for so long, that takes a serious serious toll on your mental health, especially for social animals. And elephants are social just like humans are. So they do need that socialization, otherwise, they they will suffer. In the wild, they also spend up to three fourths of their day eating. And if they're walking around and carrying people 12 plus hours a day, how are they going to get the amount of food that they need to sustain themselves, they spend three fourths of their day eating. So if you divide up 24 hours of the day, that's 18 hours that they spend eating in a day, an adult elephant, so they only sleep You know, four to six hours, depending on the elephant a night. So that's their entire waking day eating. So they're, they're starving, when they're, they're not going to be able to get enough to eat, while they're, you know, being ridden and being used in these in these tourist destinations. So those are the three main points, we will talk about what we can do, um, places that we can visit instead of the elephants how, how this has affected Thailand's tourism and everything. And I also have a few studies I'd like to talk with you about about different Thailand, you know, Camps, sanctuaries, whatever you want to call them. And we will talk about that right after this. *Ad* When you travel, you should be protected, especially if you enjoy adventurous activities, or wildlife tourism. That's where travel insurance comes in. I personally use world nomads because their coverage makes the most sense for me. They cover injuries or illnesses, lost luggage, canceled flights, and even damaged electronics. Protect yourself and your trip with World nomads travel insurance, check if their coverage is right for you using the link in the description.*Ad* If you're a frequent traveler, you need a travel credit card that works for you. I love my Chase Sapphire preferred card because I earn miles by making my everyday purchases and two to five time the miles on travel purchases. can book flights for a discoun directly through the chase ap using the miles I have earned allowing me to fly for free earn 50,000 miles when you sig up through the link in th description. And even more bonu miles after spending $4,000 i the first three months of you card. That's over $2,000 wort of travel miles. Where will y u fly for free with your mile? Welcome back. Thanks f r listening to that. So we ju t finished talking about the thr e big reasons why we don't want o ride an elephant. And those a e the training that they have o go through. Traditionall, their physical anatomy and heir natural behaviors. So let' now talk about what we can do. nd let's talk about some fact about you know, different camp and things that we can visi and things that we should avoi while we're visiting Chiang Ma. So the increase of interest n wildlife tourism has directly ncreased the demand for lephant tourism in Thailand. So he more people are interested n elephants and elephant ourism and elephant welfare, he more the demand has been in hailand for elephant tourism, hether good or bad tourism, ecause elephant tourism in and of itself is not necessarily a bad thing. A while ago, I don't have the exact date. But a while ago, a video of the separation ceremony that we previously talked about went viral on social media drawing attention to unethical elephant tourism. So after this video went viral on the internet, people really started to pay attention like there was really no way for them to know before that. And that is a great example on how social media and the internet are extremely powerful tools in ethical animal tourism. So this video went viral. People figured out how these elephants were trained for You know, elephant riding or circuses, things like that. And that greatly affected elephant tourism in Thailand. And this affected what's called the tourist gaze, the tourist aze is basically how, in this ase, Thailand has changed its ourism practices due to what ourists expect of them. So it's ind of a complicated sychological feat that that was ermed the tourist gaze. But ssentially, tourists come to hailand with an expectation hey come expecting, especially ith the elephant tourism, they ome expecting, being able to ee an elephant in its native abitat, but also to be able to ee it up close to interact with t in some ways, and not to be ble to see these unethical ractices going on. So the ourist gaze has affected how ot only the tourism itself has hanged, changing and favoring ore towards the more ethical, thical destinations and ractices. But hiding those nethical things more, putting them behind, you know, the fences and everything, leading them away from from where tourists can actually see them. So I have two studies. to talk with you guys. I thought they were super, super interesting. So this first tourism study, elephant tourism study was conducted by Laws et al. So multiple scientists worked on working on it between 2015 and 2016. So this was a little while ago, but not too too long. So in this study, 21 Elephant camps were surveyed only in Chiang Mai with varying types of activities. So this means these different camps, some offered riding, some offered writing, and were ethical things like bathing, feeding, just, you know, interacting with them, some were only ethical, so you know, ethical practices, some, you would come and just look at them, look at them, you know, from afar. So in all 21 of these elephant camps, 70% of visitors were aged between 16 and 35. And they concluded that elephant tourism is seen as Kind of Adventurous, you know, it's not something that maybe your grandmother would want to go do. It's more, it seemed more of an adventurous activity, that younger travelers are more often going to do. of all these visitors, including the older ones, only 12% of them were repeat visitors, meaning 78% of these people, were going to an elephant park for the very first time. And that's what I've kind of seen across the board in these is that people in general will only go do these things once and say that they did it and not really go back. And this makes it really easy for them to to hide certain things. Because you... people aren't coming over and over again and won't be able to see the decline. In health of a very specific elephant. half day trips. In this study, were usually to the more traditional shows, which is the more circus type shows and riding camps. And full day or multi day trips, were some more of the ethical destinations where you would get to know the elephants help with their with their care, kind of view from afar learn about elephant anatomy and behavior, things like that. So that is something to keep in mind that half day trips, according to this study are usually to the more traditional, old fashioned shows and riding that we want to avoid. And the full day or multi day trips are usually to more ethical destinations. I don't want to say always because there's always going to be you know, those those outliers. And lastly, none of the tourists that they interviewed expected that their actions would cause harm to the elephants, including the tourists that were going to the to the traditional shows with the riding. So I am never going to judge someone for participating in one of these activities if they don't know any better, and I encourage you guys to have that mindset as well. That's the biggest reason why I started This podcast is some people just don't realize it. And it's not really their fault that they don't know, it is their fault if they know they learn these things, and they still choose to do them. So none of these people went in there with malice, expecting that them riding these elephants and watching these elephant shows, were causing harm to the elephants. So that is something to keep in mind, you know, always be kind to each other. Think about that people are not usually doing these things, or visiting these destinations with the intent of hurting the elephants. So the second study, I'm gonna butcher this last name, from Bansidhi et al, was in 2018. So a little more recent 33 camps in northern Thailand. So including Chiang Mai and provinces nearby, were surveyed with, again, varying types of activities. In general, older camps or destinations that were older than 16 years, were involved more in the traditional activities. And when I say traditional, I mean, elephant riding elephant shows things that they've been doing for, you know, dozens and dozens of years. The older camps typically had more female elephants, usually one to four, so one male bull to four females, while newer camps had closer to a one to one ratio. So pretty a 50/50 split between the males and females. This suggests that newer camps and the more ethical camps have more successful cap... captive breeding. So breeding is more successful and more natural in these more ethical camps. And that relates directly back to what I talked to earlier is elephants can't participate in their normal natural behaviors, when they're working. Essentially, with with these riding camps, however, bulls, the male bulls can be more difficult to manage and socialize. And often prefer isolation. So naturally, an adult bull will be isolated from the group, they're more solitary. So this causes some space issues. The bulls need to be separated from the females until it's you know, breeding season. Because it can just cause aggression, it can cause some some major issues. So that is a, you know, the the negative effect of more elephants, you're going to get more bulls, and with more bulls, you need more space. So that is something that these ethical camps have to have to manage. Okay, so I'm sure many of you guys are thinking, Wait, stacia we've talked a lot about elephant camps in Thailand. What about zoos? What about elephants in zoos, especially in the US? And I wanted to dedicate most of this podcast today to specifically riding elephants in Chiang Mai. But I want to touch briefly on my personal opinion and some science on elephants in zoos and whether or not it's ethical. So few zoos, especially was just the best zoos in the world are all mostly in the United States. And very, very few of these zoos have the right resources to care for multiple elephants. And they need to have multiple elephants, like we said, they're highly social unless they have a single bull elephant, a single male elephant. If they have females, they need at least three preferably more. Elephants walk, you know around 50 miles a day and need to be in constant motion or they will start to develop some of those feet issues that we discussed earlier. They will develop those foot lesions and injuries and those can be deadly. So the 50 miles is widely debated between different zoos. A lot of the times the zoos that are saying they don't need the 50 miles a day aren't providing that amount of space. which you know is the way it is, but this has not been studied very well. So in the wild, they will walk about 50 miles a day. But some skeptics will say that an elephant won't walk the 50 miles a day if it doesn't need to. Meaning it has nearby food, it's got water sources, it's got its family nearby, it doesn't need to walk the 50 miles a day. But physically elephants do you develop those injuries on their feet, if they're not moving quite a lot. So I I personally think this is just my personal opinion that the 50 miles is pretty close to what they need. Anyway, maybe less in a zoo, but still a lot, they need a lot. So this means they need at least at least 100 acres of land for just a couple of elephants more if possible, more more land for more elephants. Which is extremely difficult for for zoos to get like that is a lot of land. That's how big some of these zoos are in total, and they can't, they can't, you know, keep that amount of space for for elephants. And the other issue that they run into is if they have this amount of space, a lot of visitors will complain that they don't get to see that elephants up close, because maybe that elephant is on the opposite side of that 100 acres. So guests aren't as happy even if the elephants are happier. So that is something that zoos have to juggle. And age wise elephants in zoos live on average to their 40s. While in these big sanctuaries that we talked about that, you know, they have more space, they have more elephants, they have the same amount of like veterinary care and food resources and water resources, things like that. But the average in sanctuaries is actually 70s. They're they live on average to be in their 70s. While in the wild, elephants also live to be around 40s. So about the same as the zoo, so the zoos aren't necessarily taking time. Like they're not dying younger than they would in the wild in the zoo. But preferably we want them to be living as long as possible, as long as they're healthy, right? Like they are in sanctuaries. I can personally say, the Elephant Sanctuary I visited in Thailand, which I will actually talk about in our next podcast episode, I'm going to do a destination highlight for this sanctuary in Thailand. I personally cared for multiple elephants there that were in their mid to late 70s. So it is possible and these sanctuaries are achieving it. So we need to find a way for zoos to, you know, figure out what they need to change in order to make that happen. Elephants also in captivity need a huge variety of enrichment, because they are so incredibly intelligent, they get bored very easily. So that's another problem that's us come across is running out of ideas running out of money running out of space for these new kinds of enrichment. And a lot of Zoos are getting much better about it, they instead of just giving them food will hide and scatter food around to encourage them to walk to encourage them to forage like they would in the in, in the wild. And the last thing is, elephants have an extremely low tolerance to cold. like think about where they come from. Asian elephants come from Southeast Asia where it's almost always warm. Like I can say, in Thailand, it got pretty chilly at night, but nowhere near freezing. And African elephants come from, you know, Africa, especially parts of Africa and the Savanna, where it's almost always hot. So elephants naturally have a very low tolerance to cold. And a lot of these zoos, these elephants are outside in the snow. And I didn't find any studies that that talked about it directly, but this is probably leading to some health problems. So and they can't, you know, there's no way that a zoo who is located somewhere where it's cold all the time, or at least part of the time, is going to have a heated building with enough space for a herd of elephants. There's just no way. So that's a lot of issues that that's zoos are trying to they are actively trying to work on these things. But it is a lot more difficult than then it would seem on the surface. Okay, well that comes to the end of talking about riding elephants. I hope you learned something and I hope that I you will you know Tell someone else what you learned and encourage them not to, to ride an elephant, I can't tell you the amount of those, you know, little viral bucket list lists that are going around online. And they'll list things like, it's like, give yourself a point for each thing you haven't done or things you want to do, or whatever. And they'll include things like, you know, ride a horse, or jump out of an airplane or go on a cruise. And on so many of them, I see ride an elephant. So there are people out there, maybe you were one of them who don't necessarily realize that this is not something that we should be doing. So you know, just educate people, that's the best we can do is just tell people about why we shouldn't be doing these things and encourage them to visit somewhere where they can still definitely interact with elephants, and get that close and personal. interaction with these beautiful animals. They're absolutely incredible. But just don't ride them, you know, there's so many other things that we can be doing with them. And at the end of these pretty sad, and not so great, not so fun episodes, I would really like to throw some fun facts your way about whatever we're talking about. So I'm going to talk to you about some Asian elephant fun facts to end our podcast for today. So males reach their full size at 35 to 40 years. So humans reach their full size it you know, 16 to 20 years, depending 35 to 40 years, that's pretty crazy. female elephants are pregnant for 18 to 22 months, and babies can weigh up to 120 kilograms, which is over 260 pounds. Oh mama, I am so sorry. Elephants have around 150,000 muscles in their trunks alone. And they are the most sensitive organ in any mammal on the planet. They can, they have been seen picking up a single peanut with their trunks, shell it, blow out the shell and then eat only the nut with their trunk. That's so cool. They can suck up to eight liters of water in their trunk. Um, and then, um, I don't know about you guys, when I was a kid, I you know, watched all those cartoons. I thought that elephants actually drink water up through their trunk when I was a kid. And if you you know, put some logical thinking to that, obviously, they're not doing that that's their nose. We don't drink through our noses, so but they do suck up water into their trunk. And then they bring it to their mouth like a big straw and kind of like when you hold the top of a straw. And then from when you're drinking a drink, it holds that liquid up in there and then you drop it in your mouth. That's kind of what they're doing what they're trunks. And they also use their trunks as a snorkel while they're swimming underwater. That part is true. their tusks are actually large incisor teeth. And they use their tusks to pry up roots and tear off bark to eat. And their tusks come in when they're about two years old, and they're so little and tiny. And it's just so cute. So elephants have this really thick wrinkled skin. And it can retain up to 10 times more water than flat skin like what us humans have. And this is part of the reason why they stay so cool in their hot climates, and why they can't tolerate cold climates very well. Because that water gets cold. They eat up to 150 kilograms, which is over 330 pounds of food per day. But half of that may leave the body undigested. So elephant poop. It basically looks like you know, like a normal Brown. You know wad that you would expect. But it has all this undigested like grass and hay and all this other stuff that they're eating and not fully digesting. And because of this, they're actually considered a keystone species because that undigested plant material is necessary for some plants to to grow some plants in Asia and Africa. have adapted to need to be fermented as they are in an elephant's gut, and then excreted in order to, to grow. So a lot of vegetation requires elephant digestion. They also spread seeds and grass and things allowing, you know, the spread of, of plants, which is, you know, really, really important. They're also very important because they create natural paths during their migration that other animals, including humans follow. They dig natural wells with their tusks as They're digging up those roots and things to eat. Those wells fill up with with rainwater, and animals flock to them, and it creates new water sources. And elephants will also bring down larger vegetation like big vines and trees, as they're migrating as they're eating. And as these larger pieces of vegetation fall, smaller species come up and eat off of them after the elephants are gone. And this is extremely important for some of their survival as well. So as elephants have declined in population, it has affected a lot of other plant and animal species around them. So elephants also communicate via sound, body language, touch scent, and even seismic signals, which are vibrations through the ground that elephants can feel in their bones. Which is crazy to me. It's like Hey, Mom, you can say Hey, Mom, from the distance of like multiple miles through the ground that your mom will feel in her legs. That's crazy. And then some of these sounds that they used to communicate are too low for humans to hear. an elephant's temporal lobe, which is the part of the brain responsible for memory is larger and denser than humans', which means they have better memories, they are better sense of memory than humans do. So that, you know saying that an elephant never forgets has some truth to it. Elephants teeth are replaced from the back up, meaning the teeth more towards the front of their mouth, are going to be the ones that are more like sanded down and worn down. And instead of coming straight up, and pushing out the old teeth, like it does in humans, they will pop up in the very back of their mouth, and work their way forward. As the more worn teeth in the front fall out, so I thought that was super, super cool. Each of their teeth are about the size of a brick, and are replace six times throughout their lives rather than the you know, once that we have our teeth fall out once and there's are replaced six times. Elephant herds are matriarchal, which means they are ruled by women, hey, adult males are usually solitary, and the oldest female is usually the leader or the matriarch of the group. So the older you get in the group, the more renowned and the more precious you are to that group. And elephants also mourn the loss of another elephant by silently gathering around the remains, touching them with their trunks, and sometimes even carrying the bones with them as they travel. So they will do this a lot, especially with the when the matriarch finally passes, they will continue to carry the matriarch with them as as they continue to travel. So I thought that was just super touching. And I loved that so thanks so much for listening. Give me a follow on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter at stumble Safari. Visit my website stumble safari.com. To learn more about general travel advice and animal tourism. Leave me a review on whatever platform you're listening. And next week we will or not next week, in two weeks, we will be doing a destination highlight of the Elephant Nature Park in Chiang Mai, Thailand, which I've done, I have visited and I've done veterinary work at so thanks so much for listening sources for today's show can be found in the show notes. Thanks for listening