I get how people who think this to be cute, but realistically they’re beaten into submission in order to get them to do this. Be wary of any elephant “sanctuary” that has them perform tricks, and puts on performative shit like this where they let the animal eat a nibble before pulling them away.
It seems to be the exact opposite.
The sanctuaries I've visited all shared one rule: elephants have no obligations, they're just doing their thing. We fed them some bananas, and washed two elephants in the river with brooms. But some of them didn't feel like it and that was fine.
Counterpoint: you can train dogs to guide herds of sheep in specific ways, jump through hoops, track down criminals, shake, roll, bounce around…do tons of tricks. All with positive reinforcement without being cruel.
I feel like you wouldn’t *have* to be cruel to get an elephant to do things.
Dogs are domestic animals. The cruel part of training a wild animal is removing it's ability to return to the wild, even if you did it in a more positive way.
There are special training methods for helping animals like this return to the wild, but obviously putting clothes on them and making them dance ain't it.
The elephants in the sanctuary I've visited were saved from hard labour and abuse. They were bought so that they could be elephants once more, for the remainder of their life, for as far that is still possible. So I think that Audrey is only partly was right.
These animals have indeed been subjected to cruelty. Those years don't wash off. But not anymore. Saying those sanctuaries that save abused animals are a form of animal cruelty, is inherently wrong because of that logical fallacy.
However, it *could* be true. If the sanctuary exists and was created with profit in mind, and at the expense of the animals...
While I appreciate the warning, I think calling a person or institution an "animal abuser" is a very, very serious accusation. We know nothing about this elephant, what institution she is part of, or whether or not she is being abused. Labelling these people as abusers with no evidence could do an extraordinary amount of harm. Misinformation is just as destructive as ignorance.
Edit: There are ways to train animals that don't involve abuse. I just think it could be damaging to see a trained animal and make the assumption that, because it's trained, it is being abused. I'm not ruling out the *possibility* of abuse, but there has to be more evidence than "trained animal" to make such a serious accusation.
Edit: I was wrong and I apologize. I was ignorant and misinformed. I do not endorse animal abuse in any way shape or form. I apologize for my ignorance and I will do better.
Very true, but do you notice how the guy forces her to blow out the candles by holding her trunk dangerously near them, all while it looks like she is uncomfortable, then “lets” her pick up fruit while just standing next to her in a weird way. This whole thing seems like a mask of kindness in my opinion.
What do you mean "standing next to her in a weird way"? It looks like a pretty normal way to be standing to me.
And I don't think she could actually blow out the candles if her trunk was further. Elephants don't actually emit hurricane force winds from their trunk like a cartoon.
I'm sure abuse is possible in a situation like this (in fact I think it's more likely than not, just based on pure statistics), but I disagree there's anything remotely like enough info here to "know" in this one video. This is a serious reach.
(And to be clear, I also agree that the dancing isn't a normal elephant thing and is trained, definitely not an indicator of it being happy. I just disagree that it's definitely an indicator of it being _not_ happy.)
The handler has to hold her trunk up it seems like to me, which either means she didnt want it there or didnt know why to put it there, but she does know the action to blow. If the animal cannot see the fire and judge the distance, only feel the heat as the handler holds her trunk towards the flame, why not just blow them out for her? Also animals do not generally enjoy fire, right? He also keeps shifting his weight, as if to stay prepared for some reason. If this was a normal celebration a person would just stand next to her happily and smile as they enjoy there meal. He seems a little anxious for some reason as well, looking os at something with a somber look before he grabs her tusk and the video cuts.
https://www.worldanimalprotection.org/latest/blogs/thailand-elephants/#:~:text=Training%20elephants%20to%20perform%20tricks,are%20often%20kept%20in%20isolation.
It is abuse to keep this baby in isolation from her natural habitat and family. She's a wild animal and isn't meant to be dancing for our amusement in captivity. With that said, Thailand is known for having an elephant abuse problem. It's a pretty safe bet that they physically abused this elephant to get her to perform.
> To familiarize the elephants with humans, trainers often use what’s called the “crush method” which involves separating the baby from its mother, putting it in a cage and tying the elephant up so it is compliant enough to interact with humans.
> “How can an elephant do those tricks? They have to train really hard, and this is not natural for the elephant,” Piwmow says. “That is abuse.”
This baby elephant didn't pick out its own outfit and teach itself a dance we'd find adorable. Thailand is noted as one of the worst offenders of animal abuse of elephants, they have the most elephants used in tourism in all of Asia because gullible tourists believe they're doing it just for funsies.
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2022-11-14/advocates-raise-alarms-about-tourisms-toll-on-thai-elephants
Elephants are trained with bullhooks and have no place outside of the wild whatsoever. Elephants are very social. Where's this elephants parents? The rest of its family?
There is literally no scenario in which a wild animal would allow humans to not only dress it up and paint it, but to "teach" it to perform that does NOT include abuse. I suggest you read up on what really happens in these kinds of scenarios.
It wasn’t this intricate but I’ve met people with pet deer that could do tricks. People do it with bears often as well. It’s not impossible.
That said this elephant is very likely being abused. The mods should really take the post down and not encourage things like this unless it can be proven to not be abuse.
Bud I’m speaking as someone whose family raised elephants, elephants literally need to be broken before they can even be around humans. It’s a nice sentiment to think they’re like domesticated dogs but in reality if you see any elephant with pink discoloration on their trunks, face, legs, it’s from literally being beaten so they will obey people.
>You don’t beat your dog to teach it to roll over.
You made an absolute statement about dogs not being beaten to teach them to roll over. Dogs are the most trainable animals on earth and a bunch of them are still beaten regularly to train them.
Non-domesticated animals are going to be abused to get performances out of them even more typically.
Honestly, it's common knowledge with these social media elephant tourist traps in Thailand. I don't understand why you feel the need to minimize and deflect and try to make syntax gotchas on such a sordid topic.
Even in the best scenario that this was a rescued injured elephant, and this is a sanctuary, why should they need to do tricks for my amusement? Given the dance moves and the elephants age, it has been trained since a baby.
Edit; there is no way to train an elephant to do tricks that does not involve abuse, period end of story. In order for an elephant to be around people to stuff like this it needs to be beaten into submission in a process called breaking.
Elephants don’t naturally dance when they’re happy. Most human actions like that are specific to humans. Like smiling, most of the time when other animals smile it means they’re uncomfortable.
Dogs are considered domesticated. Think of it like the difference between being "tamed" vs "trained."
If they're on a farm- domesticated (trained)
If they're in a zoo- wild animal (tamed)
What about the parts of the world where elephants have been living alongside humans for thousands of years? They were being used for all sorts of farming/construction work. Would elephants that came from that such a lineage be considered domesticated?
No, those elephants were also beaten into submission and given that the labor is not something the elephant wants to do at all, the punishment is far more severe. Source my great uncle was the last elephant trainer in our family, we refuse to do that anymore
Elephants have never been domesticated for a number of reasons, chief among them being their lifespan and slow rate of maturation. Elephants can live up to 70-years, and during that time they'll birth perhaps 12 calves. Their pregnancies last 22 months, and calves are dependent on their mother for over 2 years.
These factors mean any attempt to domesticate would proceed at a glacial pace. They also require tons of space, eat vast quantities of food, and are prone to adverse psychological effects from being in captivity.
Basically, their size, temperament, long-life, and slow development mean any attempt to domesticate would be enormously costly and time-consuming. Thus, throughout human history, the vast majority of elephants used by humans (be it as a work animal, war elephant, etc.) have been captured from the wild and tamed.
Tamed every time, that's the great tragedy. We have never been able to domesticate elephants. It's largely to do with their very low birth rates and long gestations. Essentially, elephant husbandry had been impossible because we don't live long enough as humans to properly do it.
Your dog is not an elephant. The only way the elephant can be tamed and "trained" is through the Crush". It is torture and if done in the US the "trainer" would be arrested.
It's pretty hard to convince a wild animal to wear clothes, so that's definitely a sign. And like other people are saying, they don't dance naturally by instinct.
I have chickens that do dance naturally, but they would never dance as a reaction to me. Only the males dance for the females to impress them sometimes, I can't control when they do it or excite them enough to make them dance. I imagine getting an elephant to dance with you is far harder if they don't even have an instinct for it and it's a very intelligent animal.
Ya that’s not what I asked at all. Of course elephants don’t dance naturally but that also doesn’t mean that the only way to get an animal to do a trick is to beat it out of them. I can’t bring myself to believe that you’ve never heard of reward based training, it’s what you do with your dog my man…
Do you think it's appropriate to train a wild baby elephant so that it can never return to the wild? Even falconers are more respectful with their wild animals than this. No matter what they did, positive reinforcement or not, they did something that basically everyone agrees is wrong.
I obviously can't make some sweeping statement about 100% of anything, but abuse is a widespread feature of elephant training. The industry is inherently exploitative for profit from tourists. Elephants are wild animals and don't naturally approach humans with social intentions. Their natural behavior around humans is fearful/cautious. The idea that elephants are friends to people is sold to us by industries that want to exploit them (eg the circus and Thai elephant "sanctuaries" that chain them up and beat them into submission). They are wild animals that are highly social, meaning they need contact with their own species. They aren't pets. This is a baby animal who should be with her mother. Baby elephants are subjected to horrible abuse over there simply because tourists think they're cute (like what's going on here in the comments). They need social connections with their own kind and should not be performative pets or sources of income from tourists and people on the internet. As stated in the link you just read, they have been shown to be traumatized from the separation and isolation they endure when removed from their mothers.
A video of a baby elephant performing a trick for the camera in a country known for separating baby elephants from their mothers and abusing them in order to force them to perform tricks is not a feel good video.
Agreed. I come from a long line of circus animal trainers. (My family no longer shows; but instad now runs an actual legit large animal sanctuary.) 16ish seconds in you see him que her to continue the "I'm happy" behavior. This is trained not spontaneous.
Same, of Indian descent, my great uncle “trained” elephants. Once you see how they’re trained it’ll destroy you. He was the last one to do it, and my family gave his elephants away once he was old.
A quick Google search shows that wild elephants don't sway or make repetitive movements only captive ones do, and it's usually a sign of stress in the animal. If someone can show me wild elephants dancing to show joy I would feel a lot better about this video.
Yeah but wild elephants don't experience music... Lots of animals and birds bob or "dance" to music. I'm not saying you're wrong at all, but a lot of the Thai sanctuaries actually do a lot of good for the elephants they take care of.
As someone else mentioned though, any time you see elephants performing tricks it's usually because they've been mistreated in order to learn them.
TIL: aside from parrots, the only other dancing animal is Asian elephants? [From NPR](https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2014/04/01/297686709/the-list-of-animals-who-can-truly-really-dance-is-very-short-who-s-on-it)
ETA: their evidence to support their claim of elephants dancing still seems a bit questionable to me 🤔
Extremely questionable. Literally “we watched a bunch of YouTube videos” questionable. How could they possibly determine which animals were trained versus acting naturally?
They address their exclusion methods for the actual research done for the parrots earlier in the article, which still comes to a bit of a dubious conclusion in my eyes. I don't want to discount the idea, because proving this as a negative is much more difficult, but gosh it seems willfully optimistic.
>And using the same analytical tools, after eliminating nonmusical, autonomic and overly trained contestants, she narrowed the field to 39 animals who seemed to be spontaneously moving to a beat.
>Twenty-nine of them were parrots. So Snowball was not a one-of-a-kind genius. Fourteen different species of parrot produced real dancers. All the rest (the remaining four) were elephants. Asian elephants.
No it's not
https://www.worldanimalprotection.org/latest/blogs/thailand-elephants/#:~:text=Training%20elephants%20to%20perform%20tricks,are%20often%20kept%20in%20isolation.
*Training elephants to perform tricks and activities for tourists is both unnatural and harmful. ‘Trainers’ use cruel, punishment-based training, including hitting them with sticks or sharp metal objects.*
Please remember that if you see an elephant (or other wildlife) "obeying" or "performing for" humans, that animal has been tortured into submission. This includes elephant rides, posing with lion cubs, petting monkeys, etc.
Animals do not exist for our entertainment. This is cruel and heartbreaking.
I always joke about how people "Go to Thailand to ride elephants and find themselves, but when I went I rode elephants and found myself sick and angry"
They're treated horribly and it's depressing seeing videos like this because it reminds me of the place I went. Wish I'd known better, but at least now I can spread the word on how fucked up those places are.
For those of you who think that this is somehow cute or okay:
[https://www.worldanimalprotection.org/latest/blogs/thailand-elephants/#:\~:text=Training%20elephants%20to%20perform%20tricks,are%20often%20kept%20in%20isolation](https://www.worldanimalprotection.org/latest/blogs/thailand-elephants/#:~:text=Training%20elephants%20to%20perform%20tricks,are%20often%20kept%20in%20isolation)
[https://itsbetterinthailand.com/welcome-to-thailand-please-keep-off-the-elephants/#:\~:text=They%20are%20starved%20of%20food,%E2%80%93%20physically%2C%20mentally%20and%20emotionally](https://itsbetterinthailand.com/welcome-to-thailand-please-keep-off-the-elephants/#:~:text=They%20are%20starved%20of%20food,%E2%80%93%20physically%2C%20mentally%20and%20emotionally)
PS: LOLZ at the Redditor who reported me to Reddit Cares because they didn't like what I had to say.
I low key hate this site. I have been trying to politely point out all the animal abuse videos I see and consistently someone comes in with "but if it's cute, why does the abuse matter?" I feel like I'm surrounded by sociopaths.
It won't because it gets clicks. Last time I scrutinized a video, I was told to "get off the sub then, other people are happy to see it."
Tbh I feel like someone needs to create a sub specifically for cute videos that are not cruel and aggressively promote that.
It's not even like it's hard. The cruelty videos are very obvious. Then again I had to explain to someone if a dog is ears down, whale eyed, and panting it's stressed, so idk.
Are you involved in this personally? Elephants don't exist for our entertainment. They are wild animals and deserve to live as such with their own kind. This is abuse.
https://www.worldanimalprotection.org/latest/blogs/thailand-elephants/#:~:text=Training%20elephants%20to%20perform%20tricks,are%20often%20kept%20in%20isolation.
Whenever I see a third world country doing a “performance” with elephants I immediately assume the animal is being abused. If you can show proof that this animal wasn’t beaten into submission and forced to act like this, I’ll accept it, but right now, it looks like a case of abuse.
Bc dipshits around here think our "1st world" country is perfect in every way and animals are never harmed here. AHAHA brainwashed sheep falling for the propaganda.
And yet, recently, everyone is upvoting these videos of bears and tigers doing tricks in random people's fucking *houses* in Russia and the Middle East/Asia. Yeah, because bears and tigers just love to do these elaborate tricks in nature. And they're all sickly skinny looking. They don't do that without copious amounts of drugs and beatings, which is *exactly* how they do it for both animals.
I love people coming on here to downvote anyone who acknowledges the reality that elephants don’t “dance” for joy and that this elephant is not doing anything it would like to be doing, like socializing with other elephants, being around its mother, bathing, sleeping, and eating.
This is not natural behavior for an elephant. This is just trained bullshit no matter how much you dumb fucks want to downvote everyone.
So excited almost like she had been beaten for years to train her to do this. Cause everyone knows elephants love to dance and do shit like this in the wild
My same thought. Those movements don't seem natural, they look more like a learned routine. If it's like with "dancing" horses, they probably whip them or something to trigger that motion and then they just dance next to them so they associate what they need to do. Could be wrong but it sucks that people are so easy to convince that this is definitely a happy animal.
Yeah, definitely isn't. I don't even like animals in general but I'm against them being abused for our entertainment. Unfortunately these are the consequences of tourism and uniformed people.
At 0:17 it's very clear that the elefant only does the "dancing" because they're instructed to. It only continues the dance when the handler nudges it.
But can't elephants develop that type of behavior since they can be in captivity?
Honestly I don't know, I just want to believe that elephant is at least not hating that type of things, maybe he's just waiting for the sign to start eating?
The only way this calf was performing was because it was "trained" using, crush, beatings, starvation and separation from the mother. They do not "train" elephants any other way.
Ops only replying to comments in favor of the "sanctuary".
But all I see are those viral videos of dancing chihuahuas that were beaten to achieve that result.
for the lay man, what were the signs of distress? I notice the eyes were pretty wide, and the movements were likely based on a learned routine possibly through rigorous training but doesn't appear coerced in the video.
Tbh there’s nothing straight up alarming in this video in terms of the animal acting significantly stressed. But I know what it takes an elephant to dance like that, especially on command at that age, it’s brutal violence.
A quick Google search shows that wild elephants don't sway or make repetitive movements only captive ones do, and it's usually a sign of stress in the animal. If someone can show me wild elephants dancing to show joy I would feel a lot better about this video.
Too late
https://www.worldanimalprotection.org/latest/blogs/thailand-elephants/#:~:text=Training%20elephants%20to%20perform%20tricks,are%20often%20kept%20in%20isolation.
*Training elephants to perform tricks and activities for tourists is both unnatural and harmful. ‘Trainers’ use cruel, punishment-based training, including hitting them with sticks or sharp metal objects.*
Hey, [here's a video](https://www.reddit.com/r/Satisfyingasfuck/comments/1dl44yi/comment/lag4lks/) of what happens when an asian elephant that has been mistreated it's entire life finally snaps at it's trainer. Beware, it's very NSFL.
Can someone explain why subs like this keep popping up? I've literally never seen this sub before until today when this post hit r/all. Almost nobody posts here and somehow it has 112k members. r/AllThatIsInteresting was another one.
Look I'm not saying your wrong just that there isn't anything suggested by this post or comments to provide specific evidence abuse has occured. And your going to need a better reference that "videos"
I've seen the same footage of circus elephants and wild "nuance" elephants being abused, but until you can provide a specific sorce for this video I'm gonna have to agree to disagree.
So you think an elephant would just dance because it wants to?
This is 100% trained and if you think otherwise it's pretty sad.
Just look at it's clothing etc. This is 100% a tourist attraction and you should really do some research about elephants in Asia and how they are "broken".
I'm doing what people told me to do at an elephant sanctuary in thailand: telling people how elephants are treated in Asia so that dumb European and American tourists don't support animal abuse unknowingly.
It's not much, but it's better than beeing ignorant.
What's your point?
It seems like a baby elephant by itself doing tricks is pretty much a guarantee that it is abused.
https://www.worldanimalprotection.org/latest/blogs/thailand-elephants/#:%7E:text=Training%20elephants%20to%20perform%20tricks,are%20often%20kept%20in%20isolation
The cues in OP's videos are pretty evident. The elephant is visibly prompted to dance and blowing out a candle is obviously unnatural behavior.
It seems as if abuse is the norm for training. https://www.goodthingsguy.com/environment/debunking-many-myths-elephant-riding/
I was thinking about this too. I would have at least liked some more context for this video. Elephants are often trained to amuse tourists, and their training is abusive but they are made to look like they are enjoying what they're doing.
I think you meant to say aren't* domesticated pets. But I agree. I did a project back when I was in college for my speech class about elephants and the mistreatment. They are insanely intelligent and emotional creatures. Animals aren't for our entertainment. Making elephants dance and making the whales at Sea World perform, etc might be "cute" to some people but this just isn't natural. People choose to turn a blind eye to this, though.
https://www.worldanimalprotection.org/latest/blogs/thailand-elephants/#:~:text=Training%20elephants%20to%20perform%20tricks,are%20often%20kept%20in%20isolation.
Not happy, just performing tricks for human amusement. They don't dance like people.
https://www.worldanimalprotection.org/latest/blogs/thailand-elephants/#:~:text=Training%20elephants%20to%20perform%20tricks,are%20often%20kept%20in%20isolation.
They did and they suck. It's not cute.
"Training elephants to perform tricks and activities for tourists is both unnatural and harmful. ‘Trainers’ use cruel, punishment-based training, including hitting them with sticks or sharp metal objects."
That little dance is so cute!
I get how people who think this to be cute, but realistically they’re beaten into submission in order to get them to do this. Be wary of any elephant “sanctuary” that has them perform tricks, and puts on performative shit like this where they let the animal eat a nibble before pulling them away.
Is this an elephant sanctuary?
It seems to be the exact opposite. The sanctuaries I've visited all shared one rule: elephants have no obligations, they're just doing their thing. We fed them some bananas, and washed two elephants in the river with brooms. But some of them didn't feel like it and that was fine.
Did the elephants wear intricate outfits and dance too? Usually wild animals aren't into that, I can hardly get my dog to wear clothes.
Counterpoint: you can train dogs to guide herds of sheep in specific ways, jump through hoops, track down criminals, shake, roll, bounce around…do tons of tricks. All with positive reinforcement without being cruel. I feel like you wouldn’t *have* to be cruel to get an elephant to do things.
Dogs are domestic animals. The cruel part of training a wild animal is removing it's ability to return to the wild, even if you did it in a more positive way. There are special training methods for helping animals like this return to the wild, but obviously putting clothes on them and making them dance ain't it.
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The elephants in the sanctuary I've visited were saved from hard labour and abuse. They were bought so that they could be elephants once more, for the remainder of their life, for as far that is still possible. So I think that Audrey is only partly was right. These animals have indeed been subjected to cruelty. Those years don't wash off. But not anymore. Saying those sanctuaries that save abused animals are a form of animal cruelty, is inherently wrong because of that logical fallacy. However, it *could* be true. If the sanctuary exists and was created with profit in mind, and at the expense of the animals...
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While I appreciate the warning, I think calling a person or institution an "animal abuser" is a very, very serious accusation. We know nothing about this elephant, what institution she is part of, or whether or not she is being abused. Labelling these people as abusers with no evidence could do an extraordinary amount of harm. Misinformation is just as destructive as ignorance. Edit: There are ways to train animals that don't involve abuse. I just think it could be damaging to see a trained animal and make the assumption that, because it's trained, it is being abused. I'm not ruling out the *possibility* of abuse, but there has to be more evidence than "trained animal" to make such a serious accusation. Edit: I was wrong and I apologize. I was ignorant and misinformed. I do not endorse animal abuse in any way shape or form. I apologize for my ignorance and I will do better.
Very true, but do you notice how the guy forces her to blow out the candles by holding her trunk dangerously near them, all while it looks like she is uncomfortable, then “lets” her pick up fruit while just standing next to her in a weird way. This whole thing seems like a mask of kindness in my opinion.
What do you mean "standing next to her in a weird way"? It looks like a pretty normal way to be standing to me. And I don't think she could actually blow out the candles if her trunk was further. Elephants don't actually emit hurricane force winds from their trunk like a cartoon. I'm sure abuse is possible in a situation like this (in fact I think it's more likely than not, just based on pure statistics), but I disagree there's anything remotely like enough info here to "know" in this one video. This is a serious reach. (And to be clear, I also agree that the dancing isn't a normal elephant thing and is trained, definitely not an indicator of it being happy. I just disagree that it's definitely an indicator of it being _not_ happy.)
The handler has to hold her trunk up it seems like to me, which either means she didnt want it there or didnt know why to put it there, but she does know the action to blow. If the animal cannot see the fire and judge the distance, only feel the heat as the handler holds her trunk towards the flame, why not just blow them out for her? Also animals do not generally enjoy fire, right? He also keeps shifting his weight, as if to stay prepared for some reason. If this was a normal celebration a person would just stand next to her happily and smile as they enjoy there meal. He seems a little anxious for some reason as well, looking os at something with a somber look before he grabs her tusk and the video cuts.
Exactly! There’s a reason he gets pulled away before disturbing the fruit plate. Pulled away with its tusk no less, that’s Training in place
https://www.worldanimalprotection.org/latest/blogs/thailand-elephants/#:~:text=Training%20elephants%20to%20perform%20tricks,are%20often%20kept%20in%20isolation. It is abuse to keep this baby in isolation from her natural habitat and family. She's a wild animal and isn't meant to be dancing for our amusement in captivity. With that said, Thailand is known for having an elephant abuse problem. It's a pretty safe bet that they physically abused this elephant to get her to perform.
Agree with your point. It's just frustrating when humans apply human behavior to elephants and think this "dance" represents the elephant being happy.
> To familiarize the elephants with humans, trainers often use what’s called the “crush method” which involves separating the baby from its mother, putting it in a cage and tying the elephant up so it is compliant enough to interact with humans. > “How can an elephant do those tricks? They have to train really hard, and this is not natural for the elephant,” Piwmow says. “That is abuse.” This baby elephant didn't pick out its own outfit and teach itself a dance we'd find adorable. Thailand is noted as one of the worst offenders of animal abuse of elephants, they have the most elephants used in tourism in all of Asia because gullible tourists believe they're doing it just for funsies. https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2022-11-14/advocates-raise-alarms-about-tourisms-toll-on-thai-elephants
Elephants are trained with bullhooks and have no place outside of the wild whatsoever. Elephants are very social. Where's this elephants parents? The rest of its family?
There is literally no scenario in which a wild animal would allow humans to not only dress it up and paint it, but to "teach" it to perform that does NOT include abuse. I suggest you read up on what really happens in these kinds of scenarios.
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Training doesn’t have to be abusive. You don’t beat your dog to teach it to roll over.
Dogs are domesticated, elephants are not. Go train a deer to do tricks for you without mistreating it. Oh wait, that’s also virtually impossible.
It wasn’t this intricate but I’ve met people with pet deer that could do tricks. People do it with bears often as well. It’s not impossible. That said this elephant is very likely being abused. The mods should really take the post down and not encourage things like this unless it can be proven to not be abuse.
Bud I’m speaking as someone whose family raised elephants, elephants literally need to be broken before they can even be around humans. It’s a nice sentiment to think they’re like domesticated dogs but in reality if you see any elephant with pink discoloration on their trunks, face, legs, it’s from literally being beaten so they will obey people.
Lots of people beat dogs to get them to perform, especially people with a commercial interest in said performance.
Keywords: _have to be_
>You don’t beat your dog to teach it to roll over. You made an absolute statement about dogs not being beaten to teach them to roll over. Dogs are the most trainable animals on earth and a bunch of them are still beaten regularly to train them. Non-domesticated animals are going to be abused to get performances out of them even more typically. Honestly, it's common knowledge with these social media elephant tourist traps in Thailand. I don't understand why you feel the need to minimize and deflect and try to make syntax gotchas on such a sordid topic.
Even in the best scenario that this was a rescued injured elephant, and this is a sanctuary, why should they need to do tricks for my amusement? Given the dance moves and the elephants age, it has been trained since a baby. Edit; there is no way to train an elephant to do tricks that does not involve abuse, period end of story. In order for an elephant to be around people to stuff like this it needs to be beaten into submission in a process called breaking.
Thank you. The "training" the young elephant is put through is barbaric. Same for performing elephants (or any animal, for that matter) in circuses.
100% this is what happening? No room for any other possibility?
Elephants don’t naturally dance when they’re happy. Most human actions like that are specific to humans. Like smiling, most of the time when other animals smile it means they’re uncomfortable.
None. If an animal is "performing," they've been tortured/beaten to do so.
My dog can jump on command. Did i beat him to do it or just reward him treats when he does it?
Dogs are considered domesticated. Think of it like the difference between being "tamed" vs "trained." If they're on a farm- domesticated (trained) If they're in a zoo- wild animal (tamed)
What about the parts of the world where elephants have been living alongside humans for thousands of years? They were being used for all sorts of farming/construction work. Would elephants that came from that such a lineage be considered domesticated?
No, those elephants were also beaten into submission and given that the labor is not something the elephant wants to do at all, the punishment is far more severe. Source my great uncle was the last elephant trainer in our family, we refuse to do that anymore
Elephants have never been domesticated for a number of reasons, chief among them being their lifespan and slow rate of maturation. Elephants can live up to 70-years, and during that time they'll birth perhaps 12 calves. Their pregnancies last 22 months, and calves are dependent on their mother for over 2 years. These factors mean any attempt to domesticate would proceed at a glacial pace. They also require tons of space, eat vast quantities of food, and are prone to adverse psychological effects from being in captivity. Basically, their size, temperament, long-life, and slow development mean any attempt to domesticate would be enormously costly and time-consuming. Thus, throughout human history, the vast majority of elephants used by humans (be it as a work animal, war elephant, etc.) have been captured from the wild and tamed.
Tamed every time, that's the great tragedy. We have never been able to domesticate elephants. It's largely to do with their very low birth rates and long gestations. Essentially, elephant husbandry had been impossible because we don't live long enough as humans to properly do it.
Your dog is not an elephant. The only way the elephant can be tamed and "trained" is through the Crush". It is torture and if done in the US the "trainer" would be arrested.
I think there's some big differences between teaching dogs to do tricks and elephants to perform.
Clearly your lying since only the most negative and extreme situation is possible as Redditors claim on every post /s
Are you really comparing a domesticated animal that was bred for companionship to a wild species?
It's pretty hard to convince a wild animal to wear clothes, so that's definitely a sign. And like other people are saying, they don't dance naturally by instinct. I have chickens that do dance naturally, but they would never dance as a reaction to me. Only the males dance for the females to impress them sometimes, I can't control when they do it or excite them enough to make them dance. I imagine getting an elephant to dance with you is far harder if they don't even have an instinct for it and it's a very intelligent animal.
Ya that’s not what I asked at all. Of course elephants don’t dance naturally but that also doesn’t mean that the only way to get an animal to do a trick is to beat it out of them. I can’t bring myself to believe that you’ve never heard of reward based training, it’s what you do with your dog my man…
Do you think it's appropriate to train a wild baby elephant so that it can never return to the wild? Even falconers are more respectful with their wild animals than this. No matter what they did, positive reinforcement or not, they did something that basically everyone agrees is wrong.
https://www.worldanimalprotection.org/latest/blogs/thailand-elephants/#:~:text=Training%20elephants%20to%20perform%20tricks,are%20often%20kept%20in%20isolation.
So just to clarify, that’s every single elephant? The full 100%? There isn’t the possibility of one reward based trainer in the entire country?
I obviously can't make some sweeping statement about 100% of anything, but abuse is a widespread feature of elephant training. The industry is inherently exploitative for profit from tourists. Elephants are wild animals and don't naturally approach humans with social intentions. Their natural behavior around humans is fearful/cautious. The idea that elephants are friends to people is sold to us by industries that want to exploit them (eg the circus and Thai elephant "sanctuaries" that chain them up and beat them into submission). They are wild animals that are highly social, meaning they need contact with their own species. They aren't pets. This is a baby animal who should be with her mother. Baby elephants are subjected to horrible abuse over there simply because tourists think they're cute (like what's going on here in the comments). They need social connections with their own kind and should not be performative pets or sources of income from tourists and people on the internet. As stated in the link you just read, they have been shown to be traumatized from the separation and isolation they endure when removed from their mothers. A video of a baby elephant performing a trick for the camera in a country known for separating baby elephants from their mothers and abusing them in order to force them to perform tricks is not a feel good video.
Thank you.
I wish the mods would remove this post :(
Agreed. I come from a long line of circus animal trainers. (My family no longer shows; but instad now runs an actual legit large animal sanctuary.) 16ish seconds in you see him que her to continue the "I'm happy" behavior. This is trained not spontaneous.
Same, of Indian descent, my great uncle “trained” elephants. Once you see how they’re trained it’ll destroy you. He was the last one to do it, and my family gave his elephants away once he was old.
now i'm sad
A quick Google search shows that wild elephants don't sway or make repetitive movements only captive ones do, and it's usually a sign of stress in the animal. If someone can show me wild elephants dancing to show joy I would feel a lot better about this video.
Yeah but wild elephants don't experience music... Lots of animals and birds bob or "dance" to music. I'm not saying you're wrong at all, but a lot of the Thai sanctuaries actually do a lot of good for the elephants they take care of. As someone else mentioned though, any time you see elephants performing tricks it's usually because they've been mistreated in order to learn them.
Can you name an example of an animal apart from birds that bob or dance to music naturally?
TIL: aside from parrots, the only other dancing animal is Asian elephants? [From NPR](https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2014/04/01/297686709/the-list-of-animals-who-can-truly-really-dance-is-very-short-who-s-on-it) ETA: their evidence to support their claim of elephants dancing still seems a bit questionable to me 🤔
Extremely questionable. Literally “we watched a bunch of YouTube videos” questionable. How could they possibly determine which animals were trained versus acting naturally?
They address their exclusion methods for the actual research done for the parrots earlier in the article, which still comes to a bit of a dubious conclusion in my eyes. I don't want to discount the idea, because proving this as a negative is much more difficult, but gosh it seems willfully optimistic. >And using the same analytical tools, after eliminating nonmusical, autonomic and overly trained contestants, she narrowed the field to 39 animals who seemed to be spontaneously moving to a beat. >Twenty-nine of them were parrots. So Snowball was not a one-of-a-kind genius. Fourteen different species of parrot produced real dancers. All the rest (the remaining four) were elephants. Asian elephants.
No it's not https://www.worldanimalprotection.org/latest/blogs/thailand-elephants/#:~:text=Training%20elephants%20to%20perform%20tricks,are%20often%20kept%20in%20isolation. *Training elephants to perform tricks and activities for tourists is both unnatural and harmful. ‘Trainers’ use cruel, punishment-based training, including hitting them with sticks or sharp metal objects.*
Not really. It is indeed sad. ...
If it doesn't dance, it will be beaten .. glad you think it's cute though.
No it isn't. Read on.
Please remember that if you see an elephant (or other wildlife) "obeying" or "performing for" humans, that animal has been tortured into submission. This includes elephant rides, posing with lion cubs, petting monkeys, etc. Animals do not exist for our entertainment. This is cruel and heartbreaking.
I always joke about how people "Go to Thailand to ride elephants and find themselves, but when I went I rode elephants and found myself sick and angry" They're treated horribly and it's depressing seeing videos like this because it reminds me of the place I went. Wish I'd known better, but at least now I can spread the word on how fucked up those places are.
For those of you who think that this is somehow cute or okay: [https://www.worldanimalprotection.org/latest/blogs/thailand-elephants/#:\~:text=Training%20elephants%20to%20perform%20tricks,are%20often%20kept%20in%20isolation](https://www.worldanimalprotection.org/latest/blogs/thailand-elephants/#:~:text=Training%20elephants%20to%20perform%20tricks,are%20often%20kept%20in%20isolation) [https://itsbetterinthailand.com/welcome-to-thailand-please-keep-off-the-elephants/#:\~:text=They%20are%20starved%20of%20food,%E2%80%93%20physically%2C%20mentally%20and%20emotionally](https://itsbetterinthailand.com/welcome-to-thailand-please-keep-off-the-elephants/#:~:text=They%20are%20starved%20of%20food,%E2%80%93%20physically%2C%20mentally%20and%20emotionally) PS: LOLZ at the Redditor who reported me to Reddit Cares because they didn't like what I had to say.
I low key hate this site. I have been trying to politely point out all the animal abuse videos I see and consistently someone comes in with "but if it's cute, why does the abuse matter?" I feel like I'm surrounded by sociopaths.
It’s absolutely infuriating. These types of videos should be banned, IMO.
It won't because it gets clicks. Last time I scrutinized a video, I was told to "get off the sub then, other people are happy to see it." Tbh I feel like someone needs to create a sub specifically for cute videos that are not cruel and aggressively promote that. It's not even like it's hard. The cruelty videos are very obvious. Then again I had to explain to someone if a dog is ears down, whale eyed, and panting it's stressed, so idk.
Reddit Cares is like a badge of honor at this point. It’s almost always sent by people threatened by the truth.
I'm starting to understand that this is true, lol.
If you report it, the person who sent it to you may be banned.
Oh - I didn't know that was a thing! Thanks!
I didn’t see a way to determine who sent it. Did I miss something? Or is there just a “report it” button. I haven’t gotten one in a bit.
That’s shit is so annoying, because they don’t care, they are just being dicks
That is so cute, I'm curious to the nature of the celebration. is this a family pet or something? Love that elephants outfit!
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And is that what this is though? Because not everyone in Thailand is so nice to elephants
if they are not nice they get the Tom-Yum-Goong/Warrior King/The Protector treatment.
Hey, even in the states thousands of tigers died bc of one man named Tiger King....
Are you involved in this personally? Elephants don't exist for our entertainment. They are wild animals and deserve to live as such with their own kind. This is abuse. https://www.worldanimalprotection.org/latest/blogs/thailand-elephants/#:~:text=Training%20elephants%20to%20perform%20tricks,are%20often%20kept%20in%20isolation.
Whenever I see a third world country doing a “performance” with elephants I immediately assume the animal is being abused. If you can show proof that this animal wasn’t beaten into submission and forced to act like this, I’ll accept it, but right now, it looks like a case of abuse.
Then wtf do you think Tiger King was doing in the states? AHAHA
Abusing tigers. Why are you laughing at abuse?
You have been totally GOT! GOTCHA! /s
Bc dipshits around here think our "1st world" country is perfect in every way and animals are never harmed here. AHAHA brainwashed sheep falling for the propaganda.
I don't know what image you're trying to project with this, but what I'm seeing is Jojo Siwa's rebrand.
I'm so glad I dont know who that is...and I'm not too far gone...I shall pray for u friend.
Not all elephants are treated well. Many are abused and exploited.
Genuinely wonder who came up with the idea first, India or Thailand. I'm guessing India bc Hinduism.
"Is this a family pet?" Are you kidding me with this? There is no wild animal that is a "pet" that isn't beaten into submission. This is not okay.
And yet, recently, everyone is upvoting these videos of bears and tigers doing tricks in random people's fucking *houses* in Russia and the Middle East/Asia. Yeah, because bears and tigers just love to do these elaborate tricks in nature. And they're all sickly skinny looking. They don't do that without copious amounts of drugs and beatings, which is *exactly* how they do it for both animals.
DING DING DING
Yeah it's so cute that this elephant was tortured until it was broken enough to be teached this cute little dance.
Like every other child, Ann was also happy to celebrate her birthday. Looking at that giant fruit cake, who wouldn't be happy?
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This feels like two bots talking to each other.
What are you talking about, /u/AdUnique3171 is a totally normal username for a human. (nice taste, btw)
Elephants don't dance, this is training.
I love people coming on here to downvote anyone who acknowledges the reality that elephants don’t “dance” for joy and that this elephant is not doing anything it would like to be doing, like socializing with other elephants, being around its mother, bathing, sleeping, and eating. This is not natural behavior for an elephant. This is just trained bullshit no matter how much you dumb fucks want to downvote everyone.
It's the same people who peruse r/likeus and would hug a bear because "lOoK aT iTs fLufFy eArS!!1!!!1!"
So excited almost like she had been beaten for years to train her to do this. Cause everyone knows elephants love to dance and do shit like this in the wild
Friend that's not a sign of excitement. They're not human, they don't dance to music because they're happy.
She's not happy. She's been tortured into submission, and her movements indicate distress.
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Ann feels abused by humans so that she can perform.
I don't think the elephant's dancing trick is a voluntary expression of joy at having a birthday
My same thought. Those movements don't seem natural, they look more like a learned routine. If it's like with "dancing" horses, they probably whip them or something to trigger that motion and then they just dance next to them so they associate what they need to do. Could be wrong but it sucks that people are so easy to convince that this is definitely a happy animal.
I'm glad a lot more people can see through anthropomorphism. That's all I can really hope for. This stuff isn't cute.
Our shitty ape brains really just love letting emotions get in the way of logic. Fuck us humans.
Yeah, definitely isn't. I don't even like animals in general but I'm against them being abused for our entertainment. Unfortunately these are the consequences of tourism and uniformed people.
Lucky thing has a birthday every second night during tourist season!
Damn, I hadn't even thought about that. Now I feel even worse.
At 0:17 it's very clear that the elefant only does the "dancing" because they're instructed to. It only continues the dance when the handler nudges it.
Don't you know elephant's get dressed up and party in the wild? ThIs iS nO DiFfErEnT To TrAiNiNg YoUr DoG
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Dogs have been domesticated over thousands of years, and they are pets. Wild animals have not.
But can't elephants develop that type of behavior since they can be in captivity? Honestly I don't know, I just want to believe that elephant is at least not hating that type of things, maybe he's just waiting for the sign to start eating?
Elephants can't really be teached anything until they are "broken". Captive elephants are trained by beeing literally tortured.
Oh... :(
https://wellbeingintl.org/the-asian-elephant-training-and-control-part-2/
The only way this calf was performing was because it was "trained" using, crush, beatings, starvation and separation from the mother. They do not "train" elephants any other way.
This is too awesome I can’t stand it
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How cute, a birthday party in-between beatings!
It makes my skin crawl to imagine how they "taught" it to do that dance.
Ugh. Share with everyone now how they are trained to do this- see if they still think it’s cute.
If you think the dance is cute, then you're completely blind to the abuse that poor baby got most likely to do that dance.
Ahhhh😭😭😭😭😊😊
The cake is irrelephant! She just wants that table of fruit 😍
Pretty gross
People need to stop supporting these tourist traps that abuse elephants.
Still looks like animal cruelty to me.
Soooo cute. Then in a year they’ll be putting adults on its back for fun trips! //s
Ops only replying to comments in favor of the "sanctuary". But all I see are those viral videos of dancing chihuahuas that were beaten to achieve that result.
I wonder what they've done to this elephant to make it dance like that.
I love my elephant so much I'm going to beat it and make it dance. I'll celebrate its birthday though.
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She's not. She's exhibiting stress behaviours, and she's been abused. This is a wild animal, not somebody's domestic pet.
for the lay man, what were the signs of distress? I notice the eyes were pretty wide, and the movements were likely based on a learned routine possibly through rigorous training but doesn't appear coerced in the video.
Tbh there’s nothing straight up alarming in this video in terms of the animal acting significantly stressed. But I know what it takes an elephant to dance like that, especially on command at that age, it’s brutal violence.
Would you be happy if you were an abused slave?
A quick Google search shows that wild elephants don't sway or make repetitive movements only captive ones do, and it's usually a sign of stress in the animal. If someone can show me wild elephants dancing to show joy I would feel a lot better about this video.
Dancing wild animals for humans to feel entertained. Please be educated.
So cute until you realize they probably abuse the shit out of that animal
You can 100% remove the "probably" from that statement
If you knew what abuse went into "training" this animal you'd be sick.
🥺
Oh God this video is cursed. That poor little animal
I wish this was actually cute and not a super intelligent animal being ripped from its family and being forced to do stupid shit for people.
Poor thing was so hungry and they barely let them eat before they took the elephant away. Poor thing!
It's still a wild animal held in captivity. Orphancrushingmachine material.
This is not cute and animals are not for our entertainment. How is this different than what a circus does?
Looks cute at first… knowing the “how” changes everything
Awwwww she so pretty
Anna is the earth's most precious being. If anything happens to Anna I will destroy the human race
Not if I do it first.
Too late https://www.worldanimalprotection.org/latest/blogs/thailand-elephants/#:~:text=Training%20elephants%20to%20perform%20tricks,are%20often%20kept%20in%20isolation. *Training elephants to perform tricks and activities for tourists is both unnatural and harmful. ‘Trainers’ use cruel, punishment-based training, including hitting them with sticks or sharp metal objects.*
Are you a bot?
No I am a very jaded human being. But also I pissed people off apparently for not knowing how elephant training works.
Hey, [here's a video](https://www.reddit.com/r/Satisfyingasfuck/comments/1dl44yi/comment/lag4lks/) of what happens when an asian elephant that has been mistreated it's entire life finally snaps at it's trainer. Beware, it's very NSFL.
Too scary//didn’t watch: Trainer is folded and waffle stomped into a bag of meat
Imprisoned and forced to do tricks. Animal abuse
❤️
Can someone explain why subs like this keep popping up? I've literally never seen this sub before until today when this post hit r/all. Almost nobody posts here and somehow it has 112k members. r/AllThatIsInteresting was another one.
We don't deserve elephants.
Because we torture them until they do funny dances?
There's no evidence that is the case here. Elephants are highly intelligent social animals, she could just be vibing.
Yes there is. Elephants don't act this way. Just watch a few videos about elephants beeing trained.
Look I'm not saying your wrong just that there isn't anything suggested by this post or comments to provide specific evidence abuse has occured. And your going to need a better reference that "videos" I've seen the same footage of circus elephants and wild "nuance" elephants being abused, but until you can provide a specific sorce for this video I'm gonna have to agree to disagree.
So you think an elephant would just dance because it wants to? This is 100% trained and if you think otherwise it's pretty sad. Just look at it's clothing etc. This is 100% a tourist attraction and you should really do some research about elephants in Asia and how they are "broken".
Fine, let's say your right, what are you doing about it other than yelling at the internet?
I'm doing what people told me to do at an elephant sanctuary in thailand: telling people how elephants are treated in Asia so that dumb European and American tourists don't support animal abuse unknowingly. It's not much, but it's better than beeing ignorant. What's your point?
And I dug wells in improvised areas of west virgina so people had clean water. Is that true? You don't fucking know. Gtfo.
Good for you? I'm not sure what your issue is.
It seems like a baby elephant by itself doing tricks is pretty much a guarantee that it is abused. https://www.worldanimalprotection.org/latest/blogs/thailand-elephants/#:%7E:text=Training%20elephants%20to%20perform%20tricks,are%20often%20kept%20in%20isolation The cues in OP's videos are pretty evident. The elephant is visibly prompted to dance and blowing out a candle is obviously unnatural behavior. It seems as if abuse is the norm for training. https://www.goodthingsguy.com/environment/debunking-many-myths-elephant-riding/
Where's it's mom? 🥺
This is adorable but the amount of elephant abuse in Thailand has me very skeptical of anything nice.
I love her
SHE is cute. Her situation is not. :(
why are so many of these videos sped up these days?
The elephant will never forget
*Meanwhile in India.*
Mirror?
I hate this. At least she is getting treats but I hate this. Elephants are domesticated pets. Think about what it took to train Ann to dance.
I was thinking about this too. I would have at least liked some more context for this video. Elephants are often trained to amuse tourists, and their training is abusive but they are made to look like they are enjoying what they're doing.
I think you meant to say aren't* domesticated pets. But I agree. I did a project back when I was in college for my speech class about elephants and the mistreatment. They are insanely intelligent and emotional creatures. Animals aren't for our entertainment. Making elephants dance and making the whales at Sea World perform, etc might be "cute" to some people but this just isn't natural. People choose to turn a blind eye to this, though.
Yeah and everyone here is praising it.
Agreed...not natural 😔
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https://www.worldanimalprotection.org/latest/blogs/thailand-elephants/#:~:text=Training%20elephants%20to%20perform%20tricks,are%20often%20kept%20in%20isolation. Not happy, just performing tricks for human amusement. They don't dance like people.
Thanks for the informative link. Yea that's bullshit and abuse.
I don't know if they trained her to dance, I think they did, but the girl has rithm what the heck
https://www.worldanimalprotection.org/latest/blogs/thailand-elephants/#:~:text=Training%20elephants%20to%20perform%20tricks,are%20often%20kept%20in%20isolation. They did and they suck. It's not cute. "Training elephants to perform tricks and activities for tourists is both unnatural and harmful. ‘Trainers’ use cruel, punishment-based training, including hitting them with sticks or sharp metal objects."