The Astonishing Elephant by Shana Alexander
Dear Everyone
It is not often you will get a book review from me, but I have just finished reading The Astonishing Elephant by Shana Alexander and thought it worth recommending (though some of you may wish to skip the chapter on the eradication of Male elephants in the States in the 19th and early 20th centuries).
The book deals with mainly domestic zoo and circus elephants in the US and isn't therefore directly applicable to our work here - it tells of a circus trainer killed as late as the '60's whilst working three musth elephants at the same time in a public show, I don't think I know a traditionally trained mahout who would even think about attempting this.
However, I found it very interesting as it seems to me Thailand is on the point of losing or ignoring it's traditional elephant knowledge as tourism becomes the Thai elephant's biggest source of income and piecemeal working practices means a 'show must go on' mentality pervades and bulls are sometimes worked right into musth.
Another area where Thailand can benefit from lessons learned in the US is that almost all the elephants dealt with in the early chapters of the book have been split from their mothers at an amazingly young age, trained by caring trainers with apparently little elephant social knowledge, and then making a living by travelling from town to town putting on shows - something that we now increasingly see in Thailand. These elephants are considered cute and trainable by one or two and taken from their mother into a purely human or baby elephant environment, considered mature by thirteen or fourteen but many are noted as showing psychological problems by twenty five or thirty.
Just because you can keep an elephant alive away from it's mother and other elephants from early in life and train it like an intelligent pet dog doesn't mean that it does not learn important elephant lessons from the mother and the other elephants it grows up with - even if that lesson sometimes consists of a heavy trunk across the head of a young ele. I think the Thai street elephant community are storing trouble for themselves in fifteen or twenty years time and would do well to read this book.
The chapters on artificial insemination are interesting to me because of efforts I know in Thailand to do the same - I wonder if lessons have been learned and information shared, I will follow up on that one.
Perhaps the most interesting chapter to me was the potted history of domesticated elephants, in which I learned the following anecdotes - amongst others:
In Indian literature elephants are considered clouds that were condemned to walk the earth following an episode where several were listening to a guru's sermon whilst hovering in a tree, they took solid form and squashed a number of his disciples. From that point on they were condemned to always wander the jungle, the monsoon occurs when those clouds not condemned return to visit their relatives.
The ancient Arab naturalist Ibn Quatayba stated that if only their tongues were not inverted elephants would be able to speak.
In the late 1980's the US bureau of Labour Statistics recorded Elephant Handler as the most dangerous job in the US - about 1/3 more dangerous than hang-gliding - perhaps a symptom of the problems discussed above and the lack of what I would call innate traditional knowledge (I should point out at this stage that Mrs Alexander's book then goes on to describe how the situation has been improved).
Many thanks
It is not often you will get a book review from me, but I have just finished reading The Astonishing Elephant by Shana Alexander and thought it worth recommending (though some of you may wish to skip the chapter on the eradication of Male elephants in the States in the 19th and early 20th centuries).
The book deals with mainly domestic zoo and circus elephants in the US and isn't therefore directly applicable to our work here - it tells of a circus trainer killed as late as the '60's whilst working three musth elephants at the same time in a public show, I don't think I know a traditionally trained mahout who would even think about attempting this.
However, I found it very interesting as it seems to me Thailand is on the point of losing or ignoring it's traditional elephant knowledge as tourism becomes the Thai elephant's biggest source of income and piecemeal working practices means a 'show must go on' mentality pervades and bulls are sometimes worked right into musth.
Another area where Thailand can benefit from lessons learned in the US is that almost all the elephants dealt with in the early chapters of the book have been split from their mothers at an amazingly young age, trained by caring trainers with apparently little elephant social knowledge, and then making a living by travelling from town to town putting on shows - something that we now increasingly see in Thailand. These elephants are considered cute and trainable by one or two and taken from their mother into a purely human or baby elephant environment, considered mature by thirteen or fourteen but many are noted as showing psychological problems by twenty five or thirty.
Just because you can keep an elephant alive away from it's mother and other elephants from early in life and train it like an intelligent pet dog doesn't mean that it does not learn important elephant lessons from the mother and the other elephants it grows up with - even if that lesson sometimes consists of a heavy trunk across the head of a young ele. I think the Thai street elephant community are storing trouble for themselves in fifteen or twenty years time and would do well to read this book.
The chapters on artificial insemination are interesting to me because of efforts I know in Thailand to do the same - I wonder if lessons have been learned and information shared, I will follow up on that one.
Perhaps the most interesting chapter to me was the potted history of domesticated elephants, in which I learned the following anecdotes - amongst others:
In Indian literature elephants are considered clouds that were condemned to walk the earth following an episode where several were listening to a guru's sermon whilst hovering in a tree, they took solid form and squashed a number of his disciples. From that point on they were condemned to always wander the jungle, the monsoon occurs when those clouds not condemned return to visit their relatives.
The ancient Arab naturalist Ibn Quatayba stated that if only their tongues were not inverted elephants would be able to speak.
In the late 1980's the US bureau of Labour Statistics recorded Elephant Handler as the most dangerous job in the US - about 1/3 more dangerous than hang-gliding - perhaps a symptom of the problems discussed above and the lack of what I would call innate traditional knowledge (I should point out at this stage that Mrs Alexander's book then goes on to describe how the situation has been improved).
Many thanks
Comments