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Rampage of the SurvivorsIn Thailand there is an animal home for elephants who became killers. Wherefrom does their belligerence come?If Natalie winks the eyes, the highest alert phase rules. Then she prepares an attack, reports her new owner Laithongrien Meepan, „she simply charges ahead and can no longer be retained.” Nathalie now already lives for a little bit more than five months "Elephantstay": an animal home for aggressive pachyderms in Thailand's old king's town of Ayutthaya, about one hour drive to the north of Bangkok. A 30 square metre barred area became her new native country, after she had trampled to death the brother of her then owner [at that time] — and in addition another three employees of the India rubber plantation on which she had been used as a working elephant. The plantation operator had bought Natalie only half a year before the amuck run. Animal home boss Laithongrien preserved the 25-year-old female elephant, finally, from being put to sleep for a price of, converted, about 12,000 euros and took her to his estate. Natalie fits in well in the collection of the animal welfarist whose engagement is financed by donations: A total of 18 killer elephants are already in his care — all animals who have at least one person on the conscience.
For decades possibly male elephant Omchakawan trotted peacefully by Ayutthaya and allowed to ride tourists on his back. Out of a clear sky he disengaged and trampled four people deadly. Apparently bloody revenge took the 68-year-old female elephant Boon Seuhm in a torturer again who had pelted them ten years before with saluting guns. And an anonymous bull killed in the Thai province of Kanchanaburi immediately seven people; seriously injured he was delivered to Ayutthaya and survived himself only scarcely his rage. Moreover, animal welfarist Laithongrien accommodates another 40 other "problem elephants" who have struck by the fact that they have rioted or have attacked other animals. They all are not resocializeable; they receive in his equipment merely her charitable support. Elephants disengage certainly not only in Thailand. Only the prelast week a lonesome elephant killed an American and her one-year-old child in Kenya. To the both a controlled wandering in the Mount Kenya had become the disaster. In Nepal about one dozen people died in the end of 2009 with elephant's attacks. The American psychologist and ecologist Gay Bradshaw is persuaded on account of own investigations that such incident increase: „The behaviour of the elephants has changed.” br> Bradshaw holds the aggressions of the great mammals rather peaceful in itself for stress-conditioned — a result of the many years' human hunting work and displacement work. „Today the people do not exercise terror any more with a spear”, says Bradshaw, „they come with helicopters and fire from machine guns, they bring horror in apocalyptic dimensions. Many elephants, thinks the behaviourist, are traumatised and suffered from chronic stress — completely as human survivors of civil wars and genocides. Elephants are poached, resettled, locked up, of her living space and robbed her social structures. If still some million elephants lived hundred years ago in Africa, today these are just once 500000. And there predominantly the older elephants of the poaching fall victim, stretch überlassene teenager's cookers marauding by the savannas. In the South African Pilanesberg-national park young male elephants violated, for example, and killed about 50 rhinoceroses. The killer elephants were survivors of cookers from the innkeeper-national park which had been decimated before by systematic shooting. You had, before they spun, at the death of her mother and brothers and sisters must colook. After her resettlement in the Pilanesberg-national park more high-ranking were absent, little man grows old. The more itself Bradshaw occupied with the subject, the more documents she found for a creeping brutalisation. Today thus much more elephant's females let down her babies than earlier. And in the South African Addo elephant-national park go 70 to 90 percent of all deaths of male elephants on the account of other bulls — an earlier atypical behaviour. Therefore the Thai animal home boss Laithongrien pays strict attention to preveting that his killer elephants come close to each other to. Everyone is chained up. „If we allowed them to freely walk around, there would be a bloodbath”, explains Laithongrien. „These elephants are like soldiers, they were born to wage war.” THILO THIELICE - DER SPIEGEL 3/2010 Seite 109 Vgl.: |
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