Is it true elephants are really friendly towards humans? Tell me abou the elephants. Could I go up to one safely and pet it?
Okay I tell you a story about elephants, they are THE most dangerous animals in a zoo - in fact I was in africa and the guides were shitting themselves when they saw an elephant bull in the bush and we were too far away from the car to run - extremely unpredictable extremely intelligent and take NO SHIT from you.
okay here's the story..
My zoo had some elephant off spring, a little calf called susie - elephant babies are amongst the cutest things on this planet - the way they run and their ears are flopping around and they are just really a lot of fun.
But elephants are smart and they are just like kids you need to teach them to behave, in the wild the mantra (female leader of the herd) and others in the herd who enjoy high ranking do that job - they show the calf how to behave, elephant herd behavior is very complex.
In the zoo environment the head zookeeper for the elphants has to take on the role of the mantra, which is very hard and difficult and dangerous.
Now..
So susie was this cute little elephant baby, happy go lucky. News papers of course went wild and showed pictures of her and we had more than the usual crowds visiting the zoo especially to see her.
The problem started when Susie as every little rebellious child miss behaved and the head zookeeper had to naturally showed her her boundaries - here's the line little one you cross that you get a little smacked - he carried a bamboo stick with him he would use to guide the elephants (never use a hook they do that in circus and its disgusting) - so he would give her a little tap on the trunk and their trunk is sensitive so she didn't like it of course but she learned a lesson - don't do that I told you not to do that.
Of course your usual soccer moms when ballistic - people complained left right and center about animal abuse etc. the news papers lapped up that story and there was no way to explain why it had to be done.
End of the story is - the head zookeeper was ordered not to discipline the calf, she turned out a complete BITCH of an elephant who knows no boundaries, she nearly killed me once when I let them all in and I stood beside the gate, she wouldn't just charge you but she would sneak up on you, now lol you would ask how can an elephant sneak up on you, well what she would do is to slowly and slowly ever so slowly come closer and closer until you are trapped than she would put her body against you - crush you, I just got away by the nick of time because I payed attention to the other animals - close call I never made that mistake again.
