These social animals deserve much better

Over the past 10 years, I have visited many elephant camps worldwide to study the elephants' welfare condition. In Thailand alone, my team identified 160 elephant venues and visited 150 of them in 2015.

In a camp, I saw a relatively young elephant, maybe 6 or 7 years old, chained to the ground with an extremely short chain, which allowed her to move for maybe just 50 centimeters on each side. She was moving back and forth in clear distress until an adult female elephant that was chained nearby reached out with her trunk. The adult elephant could just reach the younger one's head to provide comfort.

I do not know if the adult elephant was the younger one's mother, aunt or relative, but it revealed the stressful and unnatural conditions these complex, social animals are forced to live in.

Also, I've seen an adult male elephant chained at the back of a guesthouse. Bull elephants are notoriously difficult to handle and often kill or injure their handlers, so they aren't often used in tourism. Instead, they end up being chained to trees or in the backyard of buildings.

The one I saw couldn't move more than 1 meter and both its front feet were shackled very tightly, allowing him to only shuffle. For hours he kept shaking his head and trunk from side to side, a clear indication of chronic behavioral distress. To imagine that this most likely was to be his life for the next few decades was upsetting.

Many elephants suffer psychologically because of the early separation from their families, the cruel training process, the constant restraints through chains and the deprived environment they live in. Which could lead to behavioral issues, such as aggression and depression.

In most elephant camps, there isn't much noise from the elephants－they all just stand at one spot, waiting for the next command from their mahout.

Sometimes, with bull elephants, the dam breaks and they vent their frustration by attacking their handlers, killing or injuring them.

In other situations, elephants suffer from wounds inflicted by the hooks their mahouts use to control them. Especially, elephants that are used in stressful situations or that don't want to comply receive blows to the head that often leave bloody wounds.

It takes a very long time for elephants to recover from these conditions－how long exactly depends on for how long they have been kept in such deprived conditions and also on the individual character of the elephants.

If shifted to an elephant-friendly place, such elephants usually have to learn again that they can move on their own, as they have been taught to move only when commanded to do so.

They often also forget how to interact with other elephants and need to relearn this. Some elephants, however, are so traumatized that they prefer to stay alone and don't fully recover.

We need to work to protect elephants from further suffering and find ways to reverse the current trend of subjecting them to poor conditions and cruel treatment in captivity.

First, we should shift consumer demand from cruel entertainment activities toward more humane alternatives. Also, conventional elephant camps should be reformed and turned into elephant-friendly venues and captive breeding restricted. And we need to ensure that people who are dependent on the elephants' income are part of that journey toward an elephant-friendly future.