ELEPHANT CRUSH:

Activists Denounce Thailand's Elephant "Crushing" Ritual (Jennifer Hile, October 16, 2002, National Geographic Today)

It's a sound not easily forgotten. Just before dawn in the remote highlands of northern Thailand, west of the village Mae Jaem, a four-year-old elephant bellows as seven village men stab nails into her ears and feet. She is tied up and immobilized in a small, wooden cage. Her cries are the only sounds to interrupt the otherwise quiet countryside.

The cage is called a "training crush." It's the centerpiece of a centuries-old ritual in northern Thailand designed to domesticate young elephants. In addition to beatings, handlers use sleep-deprivation, hunger, and thirst to "break" the elephants' spirit and make them submissive to their owners.

"It's a ritual that exists, in varying forms and degrees of cruelty, in virtually every country in Asia that has domesticated elephants," explained Richard Lair, an American expatriate and international relations officer for Thailand's Elephant Conservation Center in Lampang. [...]

Elephant management techniques in the United States used corporal punishment and negative reinforcement to train elephants until about 30 years ago, when a new method began to emerge.

"We started changing our training methods [over the last few decades] because we had the technology and the know-how," said Carol Buckley, co-founder and executive director of the Elephant Sanctuary in Hohenwald, Tennessee. "The new technique is called 'protected contact,' and it's used in more than half of accredited American zoos."

The new training depends on rewards, not punishment.

"In a nutshell, when the behavior of the animal approximates the target of behavior, you reward them," said Jeff Andrews, Animal Care Manager at the San Diego Wild Animal Park. He is in charge of training the African and Asian elephants at the San Diego Wild Animal Park.

Chailert hopes to change how the next generation of domestic elephants is trained. With a tradition so deeply engrained, it won't be easy.

The story leaves open the implication that even about half of American zoos use a more severe training method. Posted by Orrin Judd at October 20, 2002 2:53 PM