Wire Sculpture of Baby Elephant How Do You Say

These are not metaphors. These are real globe questions that I walked away with on a rainy June afternoon, later on a visit to the Dubare elephant camp situated on the banks of the Kaveri river in Karnataka. Dubare is a historically of import elephant camp managed by the forest department where elephants used in the Mysore Dusshera processions were traditionally captured and trained. Today, information technology is mainly a rehabilitation centre where rogue elephants from the wild are caught and tamed to minimise conflicts with villagers. As I walked around the camp, I witnessed elephants being taken through their morn rituals of a bathroom in the river and their meal (straw and rice neatly wrapped into fist-sized morsels). I witnessed young elephant calves giving themselves a mud-bath and ambling with long metal-chains abaft behind them leaving tracks of their movement. In my wanderings, I also witnessed an elephant in the early on stages of taming and that was when I first heard about 'breaking' an elephant.

'How to suspension an elephant' is not a question I had ever seriously considered; fifty-fifty though, having grown up in Republic of india elephants were never exotic beings but an inextricable part of our sociology, faith and daily lives. I had seen them equally gilded portals of divinity in temples, every bit practical tricksters in circuses, as indefatigable powerhouses in construction projects and every bit the sagacious elders in zoos; sometimes even in the wild. Despite our familiarity with these pachyderms for centuries, even today most people are not enlightened that elephants are non a domesticated species. In fact, most of the elephants we come up across are actually caught from the wild, whose 'volition has been broken' as they have been tamed to piece of work with and for united states humans.

Contrary to what one may imagine based on their timid nature, antics in circuses, and temples, elephants are non domesticated. Domestication involves the accommodation of a species to humans and its captive environment through genetic changes that occur over generations. A domesticated species is bred in captivity and is different from its wild ancestors so that it is more useful to humans, who command its reproduction, behaviour and food supply. For thousands of years – from Hannibal's African state of war elephants to the modern Asian elephants – elephants are not domesticated merely are rather just wild individuals whose 'volition' has been tamed. They remain immune to our domesticating attempts past virtue of their long gestation periods, their low nascence rates and their large size and ambition (expensive to maintain for the many generations needed for domestication). And yet historically, the sheer power, size and scale of elephants take fabricated them bonny to humans as an enormous powerhouse waiting to be tamed.

A history of elephant taming in India and the world

Credit: Suvasini Ramaswamy

The art of taming and grooming elephants goes back nearly 4,000 years and seems to have developed originally in Asia, from where information technology is believed to accept spread to Africa and Europe. At first, their utilise was mostly practical — as tanks in wartime, equally timber forklifts in peacetime; just they soon became symbols of religious and social prestige. The art of capturing and taming an elephant slowly became a profession in itself, whose secrets were passed down the generations, accompanied by myths, legends and folklore that persist till today. The due west course of elephants began with the first contacts between Alexander and the Indians (during Porus's defeat) and continued after his decease in 323 BC. The Carthaginians are known to accept been the offset to capture and train African elephants (277 BC) when Hannibal used them in his Roman campaigns. After Caesar's time, though, the utilize of the African state of war elephant died out and with the decline of the Roman Empire, the art of taming the wild African elephant was lost as well. The interest in elephants and their taming was however renewed with the colonisation of Africa and Asia past the Europeans in the 17th century. The exploitation of the African elephant for its ivory and the Indian elephant for its work capabilities meant that the creatures were studied extensively for many years.

Over the centuries, elephants have been tamed for 3 main tasks: warfare, manufacture and amusement (in zoos and circuses). They were trained and used in warfare in Bharat, China and Persia. The do good lay not only in their sheer size but as well in their business organization for their human trainers and in their ability to charge at great speeds. This nonetheless became a handicap once gun-pulverisation came onto the battlefield as elephants were scared into a binge amid their own troops. Every bit one can imagine, elephants are very effective at labor that requires slogging and heavy lifting. In fact, their role in the European colonisation (through logging and transportation involved in the building of roads, railways and in other infrastructure projects) can't be overstated. The elephant has also been used as an executioner, a symbol of social status and a religious icon.

Later with the advent of Europeans – like Carl Hagenbeck from Germany – an international trade in exotic animals began to flourish. Soon there was a demand for people to tame or train elephants and to follow them to their new owners and habitats in European zoos and menageries. The western elephant trainers, nether Hagenbeck'southward influence, were trained past Asian mahouts (often from Sri Lanka) and came to comport with a mixed mentality of Asian mahouts and German horse-trainers. The 1900s saw the beginning imports of elephant for circuses and shows in western zoos. This was a rough fourth dimension for elephants, as they were given bad food and suffered from cold atmospheric condition, a lack of 'normal' mental stimuli and painful training methods to make them perform. But despite these challenges, elephants were bred in captivity with moderate success and this merely worsened their plight every bit a species. Today, elephants keep to fascinate the people by their sheer majesty and antics and, notwithstanding, the grooming that they have to undergo to perform these feats gracefully, the physical pain and mental agony they are put through, are heartbreaking when revealed.

How are elephants captured and tamed?

An elephant beingness used for conveying logs. Credit: Suvasini Ramaswamy

In his historical business relationship of elephant capture and taming in India – 'Elephant Gold' – P.D. Stracey lists five methods of capturing elephants as laid downward by ancient Indian Sanskrit texts in the following guild of desirability: in pens or stockades; by the use of female decoys; by mela shikar or the noosing of elephants from the back of trained elephants; by nooses concealed in the ground; and by the pit method.

These various methods were developed and became established in dissimilar topographical regions of India. For example: in the north, there is no record of capturing elephants in pits while in the south, the stockade method remained unknown until the British (K.P. Sanderson) introduced it to the Mysore plateau in 1873-74.

The almost ancient and widely known method of capturing elephants is that of the stockade or the khedda (the word is derived from the Hindi khedna which in turn comes from the Sanskrit khet, meaning 'to drive'). In the original Aryan stockade method, a large space was enclosed by a deep circular trench and the only entrance to the enclosure was a wooden bridge concealed underneath a deep layer of world, turf and leaves. Female decoy elephants were driven into the enclosure as a trap for the wild herds that would sooner or afterward enter the trap. At the appropriate moment, the bridge would exist demolished and the trap would be complete. The captives would exist kept without food and water to weaken them, after which tame elephants would exist introduced through a new span. A furious battle would rage betwixt the tame and the wild elephants at the end of which the latter would be subdued, noosed in their necks and legs, and tied together.

In fact, a stockade with convict elephants tin can soon devolve into chaos with mothers trying to protect their immature, the older males becoming ambitious and the males trying to impregnate the females. In order to bring virtually speedier subjugation of the captives, their necks would be incised with knives allowing the rawhide ropes to bite into their flesh. These methods are the forerunners of the capture-and-tame methods that proceed to this 24-hour interval, including the cruelty, that hasn't really been eliminated.

In the pit method, which was practiced in the southward, deep (commonly tapering) pits are dug in areas frequented past elephants. Although a thick layer of brushwood and grass bundles is laid into the pit to cushion the fall of the animals, this is usually non sufficient to foreclose injuries during capture. The oral fissure of the pit is covered with divide bamboos and camouflaged with grass and mud. When the unsuspecting fauna falls in, the pit is prepared for noosing of the captive by placing two or 3 logs across the top. A white fabric is dangled over the elephant and when the elephant reaches up, a noose is dropped over the animal's head. The hind legs are then noosed. When everything is ready, the neck and leg ropes are attached to i or more tamed elephants and the captive is made to scramble out.

The well-nigh skillful method of capturing wild elephants is called 'mela shikar' and involves the chasing and noosing of a wild elephant past a phandi while riding on the backs of trained elephants. This involves a vast repertoire of skills in tracking an elephant, riding and chasing on an elephant, and finally noosing a wild elephant with a 'phand'– all of which requires a long apprenticeship with an experienced phandi. Other known methods of elephant capture employ nooses hidden in the ground, noosing to trap a wild elephant in chase, female decoys to concenter males, lassoing, harpooning animals stranded in a flooded river and chasing elephants into enclosures. These methods accept evolved in unlike regions of Asia (especially Burma, Siam, India and Indo-China) over centuries and proceed to be practiced with minor modifications. The advancements in technologies such every bit tranquilisers, guns, trackers etc. over the years have further made things easier for usa. The only deterrent to elephant capture so far has been the wild animals protection laws that have been introduced in some countries even though their implementation remains dodgy.

In a disturbing and debauched twist, in all these endeavours, previously tamed and trained elephants are employed either as decoys or equally koonkis (or khungkies) to restrain, control and tame the convict elephant. The master duty of the koonki is to printing and confine the wild elephants between them. Several koonkis piece of work on an elephant and squeeze information technology betwixt them and then that the men on the footing can work in relative safe. In fact, a skillful number of the captive elephants get weak at this stage and may collapse from exhaustion and oestrus. Some of the rogue elephants that are not subjugated are shot. In the cease, a much smaller percentage of the 'truly broken' captive animals are tamed and trained for their ultimate purpose.

These surviving animals are wounded, bitten, hungry and isolated. The captive elephants are and then marched to a kraal, or a training enclosure, where they are truly broken – in mind, trunk and spirit. The kraal is a tiny, roofed enclosure of teak beams, measuring some 12 foursquare anxiety. When the convict is introduced, the crossbars are replaced and firmly wedged in place. Early in the training process, the elephants are marched every morning and evening to the river to the accompaniment of traditional training commands. They are made to perform simple instructions such as stopping, going backwards, and turning around. The words of control are sung to the elephant, accompanied at beginning past severe thwacks with sticks and jabs with iron-tipped poles, bellboy elephants assisting and performing the same gyrations. The elephant has a prepare of body ropes to which a passenger clings as one bellboy walks along in front with a long, sharp, wooden spear while another tails the dorsum. The training is terminated by a bath and beverage in the river. Strict discipline, captivity, pokes and jabs, teach the already wounded and starving animal to obey commands and over weeks this battering renders a wild animal docile. In this preparation phase, the mahout gains the trust of the captive animal by kinder treatment and continuous attention – thus beginning their journey from the wild and into our homes, circuses and temples.

How many elephants are there in captivity?

An elephant is trapped. Credit: Suvasini Ramaswamy

Today, there are approximately fifteen,000 elephants in captivity, mainly in Myanmar, India and Thailand. Myanmar has approximately 5,000 captive elephants, most of them involved in logging. In India, at that place are approximately 3,500 elephants in a multifariousness of uses, such as festivals and temples. Thailand's approximately ii,300 captive elephants are mainly employed in tourism, where they are ridden, forced to paint, perform antics and entertain tourists. Almost all are tamed by the "breaking the will" approach and controlled by pain and severe brake of movements. In fact, to facilitate training and maximise incentives, young calves are captured for taming and training through these barbarian methods. Typically, taming involves a period of "breaking the will", where a immature dogie, separated from its mother, undergoes intensive physical punishment and injury with sharp weapons for a few weeks to months.

In a more gruesome practise called phajan, the elephant skin is slashed so that the ropes tin can inflict greater hurting and nails are hammered into the feet to teach them to lift their feet. After this bloody phase, command words are slowly introduced by punishing the calf while repeating a discussion, until the calf finds out which movement it is expected to do. In improver to causing injury and long-term mental trauma in the elephant, the process is also risky for the trainers, who go injured when a calf panics, is angered or tries to escape. Occasionally and not unexpectedly, calves dice from preparation injuries. Information technology too raises a breed of animals that are mentally fragile, engulfed by fear and prone to not trusting humans in general. Even one time trained, an elephant's life, health and happiness depends on its mahout and its use in time to come. While some mahouts and trainers are gentle and found a stiff emotional bond, some others truly believe in the power of fear and punishment in maintaining obedience. This often backfires as a subjugated animal tin have bursts of rage and disobedience and when it tin inflict serious damage on the people around information technology. This further spurs on a new bicycle of pain and abuse until ane or the other succumbs and forfeits.

Even today, in many countries, elephants continue to exist captured, tamed and trained in society to lure tourists, to entertain us in circuses and to be a part of religious ceremonies in temples. In fact, the demand for elephants is simply increasing even as the supply is plummeting due to government interventions. While most people would object to the use of elephants in circuses and to encourage tourism, nosotros often fail to see the drawbacks of using elephants in religious ceremonies but despite the prestige and care, these elephants in temples are also paying a heavy price. Further, since most temples prefer to have males with tusks, it is mostly males who are captured from the wild thus affecting the wild mating population and its genetic diverseness.

Although Kerala's temple elephants are also captured, tamed and controlled using force, their main hardship isn't the beatings. The typical wild elephant is a social beast that leads an active life wandering across big swathes of forest territory. On the other manus, a typical temple elephant is a celibate, captive male person chained to one spot (sometimes for 24 hours at a time) and bathed with a hose. Instead of living in natural social structures, these elephants are isolated from others of its kind and, forced to stand on difficult surfaces (leading to chronic joint pain). On big temple festivities, however, many unlike elephants converge in close proximity nether a hot, tropical sun and are caparisoned for ritual grandeur and crowded processions. The state of affairs is farther complicated by the fact that these celebrations are oftentimes large gatherings of people accompanied by loud music, complex smells, loud noises and stress. Many unfamiliar elephant bulls are as well made to stand up and piece of work in close proximity of each other, which leads to additional stress and fear.

This has resulted in many incidents when an elephant has panicked and, rushed into the oversupply, causing human deaths and injuries. Other cases take involved elephants that have vented their aggression against an abusive mahout by stamping him and crushing his head. In Kerala alone, elephants are reported to kill dozens of mahouts each year. The life of a temple elephant may be marginally better than in a circus merely present, information technology is definitely harder than in many zoos where increasing awareness is leading to a global trend of more-natural habitats and a system of protected-contact with humans.

What is the solution?

Credit: Suvasini Ramaswamy

While many activists have proposed banning the capture of wild elephants or their employ in religious ceremonies, the solution isn't and so straightforward. Asian elephants have been protected every bit an endangered species for nearly ii decades at present and their numbers in the wild have been gradually increasing, with the creatures beingness seen in areas where they previously weren't. Accompanied by deforestation and expanding homo occupation of previously wild areas, there is at present increasing contact between humans and elephants. The ever-shrinking and fragmented nature of elephant habitats has only meant more raids on crop fields, attacks on humans and the presence of elephants in homo villages. Three decades ago, wild elephants were known to accept killed shut to 150 people in a year, but today, there are more than 500 deaths ascribed to elephants in Bharat. Without the taming of these wild elephants and without providing them a safe enclave, these conflicts will only increase. Also, as 1 can imagine, maintaining the sanctity of elephants can help in protecting them from humans when conflicts eventually ascend.

Thankfully, there are ways out of this stalemate. In fact, a large body of research done over the past few decades has identified newer, better methods of elephant capture, taming and preparation. At that place take too been successful interventions to prevent contact with humans. It is hard to believe that despite the long history of interactions between humans and elephants (more than 2,000 years), many of our methods are based on myths and superstitions that have persisted into modern times. As well, considering the fine art of elephant-handling is so specialised, it is difficult to non have faith and respect for the elephant handlers' expertise even if it is not entirely based on facts and reason. Compounding the problem, the full general level of education and awareness of the average elephant trainer is also so low that he can't quite be blamed for many of these practices. In fact, many mahouts find the amount of apparently unnecessary cruelty in the form of the use of knives, atomic number 26-tipped spears, ropes, starvation and fire as appalling. And yet, its use is propagated considering of a lack of sensation of improve, less cruel methods. What is thus needed is greater awareness of alternative methods of grooming and a real agreement of the impact of our actions on the elephants.

Animal-friendly training methods have been used for many years now with other species similar dogs and horses merely the tradition and the historical baggage surrounding elephant grooming makes it more than challenging in this case. Training and handling of elephants by techniques of positive reinforcement, habituation and other animal-friendly techniques rather than by methods of punishment has yielded better results. These approaches cause fewer health issues, better and faster compliance from the animals and build a stronger bond with the mahout and with humans in general. Mahouts who take seen information technology in practice take also been very eager to acquire it. These methods even so are most effective only when learnt from professionals and this is where regulations and government policies tin come in play.

Many organisations such as Elephant Experts provide training in these methods based on scientific principles and observations. In positive reinforcement, a qualified trainer establishes a cerebral association in the animal's heed between a specific action, a specific command (word, gesture or bear on) and a reward (a piece of food or a gentle touch). These methods work at any age but work especially well in young calves, who are ready and eager to learn. This is akin to what 1 would do while teaching kids a new skill past kind words, encouragement and small rewards as opposed to brutal beatings and punishments! The animal also tends to learn improve in a friendly temper than when paralysed by fright and stress.

Conditions of convict elephants can also exist improved by being more than aware and sensitive to their needs. Keeping them gratis in enclosed, natural conditions as opposed to keeping them chained all the time would significantly better their quality of life and mental land. Providing softer, more than natural surfaces as opposed to hard, concrete floors would too resolve their chronic health problems. Access to proper wellness assessment, using elephants during appropriate times of the day (and not during high noon), gradual habituation to the sights, smells and crowds, and using milder forms of punishment (like tickling) can all get a long manner in making the elephants more comfortable and less perturbable. This tin make them calmer and safer for the people who work in and around elephants.

Many of our conflicts with wild fauna are the issue of expanding homo influence and presence, leading to fragmentation and devastation of wild habitats. Currently, the regime captures these problematic elephant herds and tries to rehabilitate them at one its many camps. The long-term solutions for these problems will be to check population growth and urbanisation, establish national parks, increase the legal protections of animals and public awareness. In the short-term, many artistic efforts have been made to achieve peaceful human cohabitation with these animals.

A case in point is the adoption of technology in the Valaparai region of Tamil Nadu to reduce conflicts between humans and elephants. Valaparai, a biodiversity hotspot in the western Ghats, used to be a large tract of tropical rainforest simply is at present reduced to patches of rainforest interspersed with tea plantations and man settlements (each hosting up to 250,000 people). Today, close to a hundred wild elephants find themselves drowning in this bounding main of humanity. In a collaborative project between the civil society, the regime and an NGO (the Nature Conservation Foundation), Valaparai at present tracks its wild elephant herds and employs large-scale text-message alerts to make locals aware of the animals' positions. The arrangement, initiated from 2006 onwards, is coupled to an elephant informant network, which receives and passes on messages about elephant presence to people in the area.

With the widespread use of mobile phones a bulk-SMS system is being used to inform people on a daily basis. Elephant presence is also communicated as a crawl on the local cablevision TV channel. Additionally, GSM-based elephant alert red indicator lights are mounted in over 25 prominent locations and remotely operated when elephants are within one km. These methods have been well received and implemented by the customs and are proving to be effective. A prototype GSM-based voice organization for public transport buses to inform passengers before they debark is also beingness tested. This has brought about a large reduction in surprise encounters between men and wildlife and has drastically reduced the number of accidents. A detailed database of subscribers (of about two,800 people), their place of residence, detailed maps and the location of the animals has also been prepared to identify the more than important corridors through which the elephant herds move; this has been used to classify the most vulnerable areas.

Within a short span of two years, these interventions have reduced the incidents of property damage (e.g. houses, buildings or food grain storage centres) and human deaths. According to the wood department, while two.8 lives were lost every twelvemonth before the early warning system was put in place, the number dropped to 1.3 one time it was launched, with no deaths in 2013. These interventions are likewise managed by the customs based on extensive dialogue and rely on existing and hands managed technology, making the entire programme sustainable and expandable. Funded by the U.k.-based clemency Elephant Family, other international agencies and some local tea plantations, this is a wonderful and sustainable example of using human ingenuity in resource-poor environments to tackle the complex trouble of human being-creature conflicts.

The long-term hope is that such local measures, awareness campaigns and solutions volition provide our wild animals an opportunity to co-exist with the human being sprawl. I as well hopes that the governments of developing countries will presently wake up to realise their long-standing neglect of our ecological resource in the pursuit of college GDPs and industrialisation. While progress is essential, it must not come at the expense of our biodiversity and natural resource. Nosotros must learn to utilize and conserve our unique resources by employing more than conservation-oriented policies.

What can I, as an individual, do to make a deviation?

Credit: Suvasini Ramaswamy

While these are large problems and the solutions require a lot more investment from people and institutions, the good thing is that we are non as powerless equally it may seem. Our biggest strengths and weapons are our wallets and our vocalisation. We can decide the kind of practices we choose to encourage and support. We, equally people, parents and teachers, can raise awareness about the plight of these animals, inform people about the lesser-known aspects of their behaviour and inject a sense of wonder. We can boycott circuses and performances; and lest yous think that small measures don't take big bear upon, a case in point is the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus – ane of the largest traveling circus establishments in the United states, which has to decided to stage out its Asian elephants and move them to a conservation center in Florida after a steady reject in public back up. We can assist spread awareness almost the nobler and gentler methods of animal training. We tin discourage the use of animals in religious processions or at least insist on better conditions for them. We tin can protest confronting the unethical treatment of animals in other countries past withdrawing our tourism dollars and we can actively urge our governments for better legislation and law enforcement. In fact, numbers propose that if there are no more than captures and no more than births in captivity, within fifty years there will be few to no elephants in captivity. In a country struggling with starvation and poverty amid its populace, this too makes economic sense.

We can support organisations, individuals and NGOs in their quest for better, more humane treatment of animals. We can walk away from practices similar the buying and selling of ivory because they indirectly influence the market'due south demand-and-supply equation and lead to the large-calibration butchering of elephants. There are many NGOs who can employ our back up – in kind or in spirit. Many a battle can be won by increased sensation and we can exist agile conduits in the spread of this information. In other words, we tin can be the change we want to see in the world. And last simply in no way the least, we tin can teach our kids the wonder of the world around us. We can tell them about these majestic and nonetheless gentle giants that have roamed our earth since before our arrival on this planet.

So, in closing, let'south not suspension any more elephants for the shards are only going to injure u.s..

We may non be able to unbreak the broken and unmake our mistakes – merely let's at to the lowest degree try to not make any more mistakes. For every bit P.D. Stracey says, "Perhaps it is not too much to hope that the people and their leaders volition repay the debt of thousands of years of the trade in 'elephant aureate' which has been wrung from this noble animal."

Acknowledgement: The author would like to express her sincere gratitude to Dr. Karpagam Chelliah from the Indian Institute of Scientific discipline, Bengaluru, for her generous assist in directing resources, answering many questions and proof-reading the document.

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Source: https://thewire.in/culture/journey-from-the-wild-how-to-break-an-elephant

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