I grew up in Sri Lanka, and apart from the lack of coconuts in a house disqualifies it as a house, owning an elephant signaled how prestigious the house was.
Even nowadays, there are still families, temples, and governor houses that own elephants. They are brought together to a big festival we have in my former city, Kandy. More than a 100 of them, easily. They are well treated; they are fed, and many vets take care of their health as well. At the same.time, it's not unheard of the elephants attacking humans when panicked. They live their entire life alongside humans, and in a heartbeat, they get panicked and attack everyone around them.
I have come to my personal belief that leaving enough distance with them is the best way to help out. They are smart animal beings that can manage to live in the wilderness, and pretty much every elephant death we hear in Sri Lanka involves either a train hitting one, some asshole shooting one, or some asshole owning one and not taking care of them.
It's not possible to put a price on their lives of course, but if anyone is interested in how much it would have cost them, a small 5-6 year old elephant is about $15K.
What's the correlation with elephant age and price? Are younger elephants more expensive because they're easier to train, or are older elephants more expensive because they can get to work quickly?
I think there are more strict laws against "owning" younger elephants as they need to grow up with their mother. Most people tend to get younger elephants because of the life span. They will be easier to train, and you have a few more years to get to know them with your own "mahout" (term they use for the one person who takes care, tame, and train the elephant throughout the elephants life).
For mature elephants, the owner will be paying the Mahout as well (monthly or so) because the elephant is already used to him.
When elephants get older, they are sometimes donated to Buddhist temples to keep.
> The main problem is habitat loss, along with a related phenomenon, human-elephant conflict. In India, such conflict annually causes 400 human fatalities and 100 elephant deaths.
Damn, if the humans didn't breed like rabbits the elephants would be winning!
Human beings. What a bunch of assholes. I applaud the people tying to help, but there’s just too many people and too little caring and long term thinking.
I grew up in Sri Lanka, and apart from the lack of coconuts in a house disqualifies it as a house, owning an elephant signaled how prestigious the house was.
Even nowadays, there are still families, temples, and governor houses that own elephants. They are brought together to a big festival we have in my former city, Kandy. More than a 100 of them, easily. They are well treated; they are fed, and many vets take care of their health as well. At the same.time, it's not unheard of the elephants attacking humans when panicked. They live their entire life alongside humans, and in a heartbeat, they get panicked and attack everyone around them.
I have come to my personal belief that leaving enough distance with them is the best way to help out. They are smart animal beings that can manage to live in the wilderness, and pretty much every elephant death we hear in Sri Lanka involves either a train hitting one, some asshole shooting one, or some asshole owning one and not taking care of them.
It's not possible to put a price on their lives of course, but if anyone is interested in how much it would have cost them, a small 5-6 year old elephant is about $15K.