The sign placed inside the arena states “…Welcome to the Phuket Zoo Elephant Show”…
The overzealous crowds have gathered on this day to watch an unnatural and cruel phenomenon, that of elephants being forced to perform elephant tricks in an outmoded, and should be outlawed, elephant show.
Into the arena pedals Dumbo struggling to hold on to an elephant -sized tricycle. The baby elephant circles around to the amazement of the paying crowds, exactly as her human trainers have instructed her to do. They have no choice. For the baby elephants and the adolescent elephants who make up the show are, behind the scenes, constantly threatened by a man wielding a bullhook. The elephants know that disobedience means pain, with a cruel jab from the sharp end of that bully stick.
So day after day, several times a day, Dumbo the baby elephant performs. The pachyderm not only rides a tricycle, she also does headstands on a podium while wearing a fanciful cape upon her back. Dumbo paints, “is forced to ‘rave’ to music, ‘play’ musical instruments, and to perform elephant tricks all for the tourists’ entertainment“.
Sadly, what the tourists fail to see is right before their very eyes; the skeletal frames of the elephants, the dejection in their demeanor, the weariness of their elephant bodies struggling again and again to perform such shameful elephant tricks.
When not performing Dumbo, along with her companion elephants in Thailand’s Phuket Zoo, are chained alongside each other. They are swaying, or as baby Dumbo has been observed to do, sucking her trunk with her mouth like a pacifier, her amber eyes closed in quiet resignation .
The elephants are trying desperately to tell us something. They are exhibiting these behaviors all in an effort to curb their distress.
It is so wrong to subject our Asian elephants in Thailand to such cruelty as this. Our elephants should live as elephants.
There is a sanctuary in the vicinity of Dumbo that would give her a good life.
Please help rescue Dumbo the baby elephant.
Please sign the petition today. “Send “Dumbo” the Real-Life Performing Baby Elephant to a Sanctuary”
Thank you, Moving Animals , for your compassion and brilliant campaign to save Dumbo.
Read “For Updates on Dumbo’s Plight” by animal activists, Moving Animals to keep up with progress made to rescue Dumbo the elephant.
Videos:
Watch Video “Baby elephants forced to perform tricks at a zoo in Thailand” (1:26 minutes) at the Daily Mail
Watch YouTube Video “Phuket Zoo, elephant show” (20 minutes) by kostakis georgiou Notice at 4:55 how one elephant, having just performed a headstand, chases after a man in a straw hat. At 4:15 this same man with hat & badge around his neck appears in the video walking from behind the ongoing elephant performance so he is associated with the show. Maybe this man is another one of the elephant’s trainers, making more sense as to why the elephant would go after him like that. There is a lot of shouting coming from the trainer in the arena to keep the performing elephant away. This demonstrates how frustrated the elephant is, wanting to lash out at a human like that. The practice of forcing a wild elephant to perform elephant tricks, as this Phuket Zoo Elephant Show demonstrates, must be abolished.
Resource: ” ‘Real-life Dumbo’ baby elephant is forced to dance and perform tricks for tourists in heart-breaking footage shot at a zoo in Thailand” by Joseph Laws for MailOnline, The Daily Mail
Note: It is unclear to ESH whether little Dumbo is a baby boy elephant or a baby girl elephant as both pronouns, ‘him’ & ‘her’, have been used within the same resource articles. To lessen the confusion Elephant Spoken Here (ESH) has chosen to refer to Dumbo as a baby girl elephant thus the pronoun ‘her’.
Image: at The Daily Mail and Moving Animals
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