Current Alerts

Recent Alerts

Guide to Letter Writing

Media Center

Sign the Elephant Petition

Elephants in cities obstruct traffic and threaten the general public. These elephants are used for begging by mahouts, and there have been instances in which the mahouts have used the elephants to intimidate people and extract money from them. The recent death of an elephant in Mumbai – after the animal was hit by a water tanker – was not the first time an elephant has been injured in a city, and it surely will not be the last.

 

Elephants are social creatures, and in the wild, female elephants live in close-knit family groups. They spend about 18 hours a day walking, feeding, bathing in water holes and interacting with other elephants. They are intelligent and sensitive animals and are known to mourn the loss of relatives, just as humans do. Captive settings cannot provide elephants with an interesting, stimulating and rewarding environment.

 

Numerous owners and mahouts who use elephants in cities to earn money do not feed them properly. An elephant requires almost 200 kilograms of food and more than 150 litres of water each day, yet many elephants’ owners openly admit they cannot afford to feed elephants such large quantities of food.

 

Elephants’ feet do not fare well on tar roads, yet they spend their entire days – and much of the night – walking on these roads. They develop foot problems, which are rarely treated in captivity. The pads of the feet also act as shock absorbers, as natural substrates “give” a little under the weight of the foot. In captivity, less exercise, hard flooring (which does not have any “give”), and standing around amid faeces and urine while chained up cause cracked and soft toenails.

 

In nature, elephants live in herds in matriarchal societies, and baby elephants are looked after not only by their mothers but by other female elephants in the herd as well. Oftentimes, mothers do not wean their babies until they are almost 10 years old. In captivity, baby elephants are separated from their mothers by age 3.

 

The methods used to control elephants are very cruel and cause a threat to the mahouts as well. Hands-on training requires absolute domination of elephants by their keepers, which can only be achieved by inflicting pain on the animals with an ankus or iron and wooden sticks and then reinforcing the threat of more pain. Confusion, fear and thwarting of their natural instincts – plus elephants’ natural desires to challenge for a higher status within their groups as they mature – can lead to unpredictable bouts of aggression, which are extremely dangerous to keepers and have resulted in many deaths and injuries.

 

Elephants do not belong in captivity or in cities. Please print out the below petition and sign your name. Send the petition to:

 

PETA India

P.O. Box 28260

Juhu, Mumbai 400 049

India

 

Respected Chief Ministers:

 

We, the undersigned, respectfully beseech you to ban the entry of elephants into urban areas so that tragic incidents – like the recent death of an elephant who was hit by a water tanker in Mumbai – can be avoided. The untimely death of this elephant should serve as a wake-up call for all compassionate human beings. Elephants belong in the wild, not in cities.