Blog about Thailand
A local has two Elephant’s which you can swim with and feed. The cost is 500baht for 20 minutes and well worth it. I recommend this over the elephant trekking any day.
Are elephants good at swimming ? Elephants are very good, untiring swimmers . Their big body provides enough floatation while the trunk acts like a snorkel.
Look no further than these responsible elephant sanctuaries that offer a natural and ethical way to see these incredible gentle giants Elephant Nature Park . The Surin Project. Boon Lott’s Elephant Sanctuary. Friends of the Asian Elephant Hospital. Elephant Haven. Burm and Emily’s Elephant Sanctuary. Elephants World.
Millions of people want selfies riding elephants , or washing them, or patting their trunks. WAP researchers assessed almost 3,000 elephants and found that more than three quarters were living in “severely cruel ” conditions.
Thailand . Elephant Nature Park, Chiang Mai. Elephant Nature Park – A retirement home for rescued elephants , founded by Lek Chailert, renowned elephant conservationist. Burm and Emily’s Elephant Sanctuary – Permanent home for old, retired and injured elephants , offering feeding and walking alongside them.
Interacting with the animals is one of the country’s major tourism draws, and a new organization is trying to make it more humane. More than half of Thailand’s 7,000 elephants live in captivity. But many of the so-called elephant camps let visitors bathe with them and ride them.
According to researchers, elephants also hug each other when they see their comrades in hard times. It means that elephants can recognize others’ feeling like human do . Elephants are also known to offer hugs to other species, including their caretaker as a symbol of compassionate and love .
After a river or swamp bath, they’ll throw mud and sand up and over themselves to protect their skin from the hot, burning sun.
Nobody wants to be in a situation where they need to squeeze the last remaining liquid out of fresh elephant dung . One might think the dung itself will make you ill, but there is very little bacteria in elephant dung , and the benefits generally outweigh the costs of ingestion.
True sanctuaries never buy, sell, trade, breed, exploit, or profit from elephants . They never use bullhooks or punish elephants in other ways (even out of tourists’ sight), and they don’t force animals who naturally avoid humans into close contact with them.
A socially excited elephant lifts and rapidly flaps her ears and widens her eyes. Tails: Just like a dog, when an elephant’s tail is swishing from side to side swatting away flies, it is happy . As soon as the tail goes stiff, normally held out to one side, it means that the elephant is anxious.
Wild elephants generally 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”.
Once fully trained, elephants used for riding will need to carry at least one person on its back, either on a blanket or saddle, but often with no padding at all. Carrying just one adult on its back can cause the elephant pain and over time, potentially even spinal injury .
After a 1989 logging ban, most logging elephants ended up in the tourist industry. Many of Thailand’s captive elephants are poached from the wild. 60% of Thailand’s elephants are captive elephants , and 60% of those are used for tourism.
Researchers from the University of St Andrews have found that African elephants seem to have an instinctive understanding of what it means when a human points to something. The new findings could help explain how humans form such close bonds with these huge, powerful animals.