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FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2014
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RAGE OF THE ELEPHANTS LIFE
TWO MAHOUTS DIE AS ANGRY ELEPHANTS GO ON RAMPAGE Nattha Thepbamrung & Saran Mitrarat editor@classactmedia.co.th
T
he Phuket Livestock Office Chief has issued a stern warning to elephant camps to be careful about using elephants during breeding season when bull elephants are in musth, a highly excitable hormonal state in which the animals become unpredictable and dangerous. In fact, he said, the best way to
avoid people being killed by elephants would be to simply ban elephant trekking and other kinds of commercial exploitation when the animals are in the breeding season. Werasit Puthipairoj spoke with The Phuket News after a mahout, or elephant handler was killed at the Phuchada Safari kraal in Naiharn on Tuesday (November 18) by Nong Po, a 23-year-old bull elephant which was in musth. Nong Po picked up Wittawat
Salangan, 22, from Surin Province, in his trunk, slammed him to the ground and then knelt down, crushing him with his head and tusks. That death came just two days after a similar incident in Phang Nga in which a mahout was killed. A Russian woman with an eightmonth-old baby spent a terrifying 30 minutes sitting in the howdah atop the raging elephant. Other handlers managed to tranquillise that elephant with darts and
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Photo by Liv Unni Sødem extracted the tourist and her baby safe and sound. Mr Werasit said that trying to get an elephant in musth to work “is like people trying to ask you to work when you are sick. “The elephant was still in musth, which the camp and the mahout should have known. “It was not ready to be brought out to work, especially when male elephants are more aggressive than females.”
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