Elephants: Intelligent, Gentle, Maniacal Eating Machines

While in Chiang Mai, we went to an elephant camp to watch and ride elephants. Supposedly, the elephants in the camp were all put out of work by a Thai ban on logging. Unable to work for their food, they were abandoned by their erstwhile owners and left to panhandle on the streets of Chiang Mai. Enter the elephant camps: instead of harassing tourists (hey buddy, can you spare some hay?) the elephants were put to work entertaining them. Whether this story is true or not, the elephants did seem well taken care of and content with their lot.

Feed Me and No One Gets Hurt

The elephant species, however, must have an incredible PR department. We’ve all been sold on them as intelligent, gentle beasts. What we’re not told is that they are also single-minded eating and pooping machines. They consume over 250kg of food a day. To shovel this food into their elephantine gullets, they use their famous trunks.

Gimme That!

The trunks are strong, “an elephant’s hand”, incredibly versatile, blah blah blah. Despite all this, though, a trunk is still a nose. Which means that when an elephant comes after that bunch of bananas in your hand with his trunk, he leaves your hand a snotty mess.

Both our guide and the signs around the camp warned against feeding the elephant a banana at a time. Apprently the elephants “lose patience” if they aren’t fed at least half a bunch of bananas at once. Even the baby elephant that Yukari fed wasn’t interested unless it could have the entire bunch. I wasn’t sure what an elephant does when it loses patience, but I was very sure that I didn’t want to find out.

We're Feeling Impatient...

An animal that eats 250kg of food every day produces an incredible volume of poop. Elephant poop, as was demonstrated to us repeatedly during our ride, is ejected in bowling ball sized clumps. Not content to just poop while on the trail, our elephant displayed his amphibious nature by also pooping in the river. He was even able to poop while eating — I suspect this is the Mount Everest of elephant digestive feats.

Based on these experiences, I recommend observing the following three rules whenever you interact with elephants:

1. To avoid elephant snot, wear protective gloves at all times when feeding your elephant.
2. Give your elephant whatever it wants, whenever it wants it, lest it lose patience.
3. Never stand behind your elephant. Period.

Best of luck.

Posted by pmk at June 4, 2005 12:26 AM | TrackBack