Wild elephants and elephants that grow up with people are different. We are not talking about domesticated elephants, as this might be an incorrect term.
But for our elephants, grow up in our culture from Karen people, as we do not use them for work (!). We also never use hooks – to get our elephants used to do something. Riding elephants is also strictly not available at Elephant Family Phuket. But it is normal in our culture to have a bath with elephants that grow up with people. Elephant like to have bath especially mud bath or mud spa. This so far as introduction.
As mentioned above, at Elephant Family Phuket, we do not have wild elephants. Our elephants are grown up with us. And they are living with us together over generations. We take care of them, same as other people take care of their cats or dogs. And from time to time, we are having elephants from other camps or institutions, let’s say young elephants without a mother. Those Those orphans we take care too.
The rope around the neck does not mean that they are not free! Rather, the rope helps the mahouts to catch the young elephants quickly, should they be scared of something or in case of running away.
We bathe with elephants raised by Thai hill tribes like Karen. This is part of our care for them. We do not force our elephants to do something they do not like.
At Elephant Family Phuket, we do in addition to our half- or daily programs, teaching and showing how to do Sugarcane juice or Bua Loy (colorful glutinous Rice Balls in coconut milk).
We are aware that some forums or published articles mention that camps, sanctuaries or parks like us are ethically incorrect. With such an article we cannot be agreed, as most of these authors do not know our culture. There will always be a “grey area”, what is ethically correct or not. We would just like to raise the following question. Is it ethically correct when in some zoo African elephants are kept in a small enclosure or terrain?!
At Elephant Family Phuket, our customers decide what they want to do or not do. If you have questions about our program during your visit, please feel free to contact us. We will gladly answer these as good as possible.
Our main mission is to show our customers why we are doing this. It is our culture and our elephants are our family! We are happy to take care of them!
Please keep updated, as in our next blog posts, we are writing about Sugarcane juice or Bua Loy!
