# Painting elephants.



## ChrisL (Aug 12, 2015)

I love elephants.  One of my favorite animals and SO intelligent.  As you can see, not only can these elephants bust a move on the dance floor but also with a paint brush.    That's right, these elephants can paint!  Fucking amazing, amirite?


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## Jackson (Aug 12, 2015)

Unbelievable!


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## Luddly Neddite (Aug 12, 2015)

ChrisL 
Jackson 

They're not really painting.


What the audience overlooks are the actions of the mahouts as their animals are at work. 

This oversight is understandable because it is difficult to drag your eyes away from the brushes that are making the lines and spots. However, if you do so, you will notice that, with each mark, the mahout tugs at his elephant's ear. 

He nudges it up and down to get the animal to make a vertical line, or pulls it sideways to get a horizontal one. To encourage spots and blobs he tugs the ear forward, towards the canvas. So, very sadly, the design the elephant is making is not hers but his. There is no elephantine invention, no creativity, just slavish copying. 

Investigating further, after the show is over, it emerges that each of the so-called artistic animals always produces exactly the same image, time after time, day after day, and week after week. Mook always paints a bunch of flowers, Christmas always does a tree, and Pimtong a climbing 


And, its cruel. 

Born Free explains that it is a “myth” that the elephant’s ability to paint is a result of their natural cleverness. Rather, directly refuting Maesa’s story about how their elephants learned to paint, “Elephants endure months of physical abuse to learn how to hold a paint brush, draw a straight line and paint flowers and leaves on trees.”


Like elephants used in the elephant trekking industry, young elephants used for painting must be broken and experience the pain of the phajaan process. Over this time baby elephants are starved, shackled, and beaten, until their spirit is completely broken and will submit to the will of their captors.  Once young elephants have undergone this process they can being learning to paint.

Bull hooks or the more discrete method, a nail that can be hidden in the mahout’s hand, is shoved into the soft tissue of the elephants ear.









Never ever forget that ALL elephants in captivity are beaten and tortured to break their spirit. That's true in the US as well as other countries and includes ALL zoos and circuses. 





Thinking of Going Elephant Trekking This Summer? Here’s What You Need to Know Before You Book!


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## Gracie (Aug 12, 2015)

Sadly...what Luddly says is true. Human entertainment only, at the expense of the animal.


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## Luddly Neddite (Aug 12, 2015)

*Chained, beaten bloody and weak from starvation, heart-wrenching book describes how Billie the elephant escaped the barbaric torture and indignities under the big top and finally found sanctuary in Tennessee*

*Billie, now 52, was brought to America from India as a baby*
*'For so much of her life, Billie had been manhandled regardless of how she behaved. If she blinked they would hit her. If she breathed they would hit her'*
*Training her to perform circus tricks, sharp bullhooks were used to dig in and yank hard on tender spots inside her ears, the folds of her mouth and under her arms and feet*
*They were left to stand in the fifteen gallons of urine and two to three hundred pounds of waste each a day*
*Billie had been abused for so long, she was angry and elephants never forget their abuser - or the pain*
*It would take five years before the wary elephant would let staff at The Elephant Sanctuary, where she now resides, to cut off her chain*
‘I saw how animals in the circus are routinely beaten. They live in constant fear. For them, the circus is a real-life horror show’, testified whistleblower Jodey Eliseo, a former dancer in Ringling’s ring, who witnessed many brutal acts against elephants in Ringling’s Barnum and Bailey circus.

Barbaric treatment is inflicted on elephants using bullhooks, an instrument that looks like a fireplace poker with a sharp, steel-tipped spike and hook.  It is used to dig in and yank hard on tender spots inside the ears, the folds of the mouth, under the arms, under the chin, around the feet, in or around the anus.

They are beaten with the solid end of the bullhook that resembles a baseball bat and targeting the ankles or wrist close to the bone, on the head. It inflicts great pain as well as causing massive nerve damage and a hemorrhaged brain.

They are given a mighty electric shock in the ears, mouths, vaginas and anuses.

Chains on all four legs of the elephant are tightened until the elephant collapses and then they are beaten on 'general principle.'





Read more: Last Chain on Billie How One Extraordinary Elephant Escaped the Big Top by Carol Bradley Daily Mail Online 
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook


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## Gracie (Aug 12, 2015)

/unsub

I can't handle seeing this stuff.


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## Luddly Neddite (Aug 12, 2015)

The first I learned of the routine beating of ALL elephants was when the horrendous case of Dunda at the San Diego Zoo made the news. Not long after the Dunda case made the news, another case was discovered in El Paso. That was in the mid-80s, the perps got away with it and nothing has changed.  

If you see an elephant in a zoo, a circus, an elephant "ride", that elephant has been beaten and beaten and beaten. Its not just once although babies are beaten right after their capture, and after they watch their mother and families being slaughtered.

Even National Geographic recently showed photos of so-called "training" by repeated beatings.

These elephants are tied and then winched down until they can't move.  Workers them beat them, usually with axe handles, around the clock. These monsters actually clock in and out of their shifts and others come in to take their place when their arms are tired and cramping.  There have been times when babies died from shock. 

This beating is repeated every few months and between,  they are hit every single day. 

In the book, Elephants On The Edge by G.A. Bradshaw, he quotes a former elephant "trainer" who describes the most horrendous treatment imaginable. He said he will never forget their screams.


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## Jackson (Aug 12, 2015)

Luddly Neddite said:


> *Chained, beaten bloody and weak from starvation, heart-wrenching book describes how Billie the elephant escaped the barbaric torture and indignities under the big top and finally found sanctuary in Tennessee*
> 
> *Billie, now 52, was brought to America from India as a baby*
> *'For so much of her life, Billie had been manhandled regardless of how she behaved. If she blinked they would hit her. If she breathed they would hit her'*
> ...


Sorry, can't read this.  It is too sad.


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## Luddly Neddite (Aug 12, 2015)

Jackson said:


> Luddly Neddite said:
> 
> 
> > *Chained, beaten bloody and weak from starvation, heart-wrenching book describes how Billie the elephant escaped the barbaric torture and indignities under the big top and finally found sanctuary in Tennessee*
> ...




Then boycott zoos and circuses and tell others the truth about elephants in captivity.

That's the LEAST we can do for them.


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## ChrisL (Aug 13, 2015)

Luddly Neddite said:


> ChrisL
> Jackson
> 
> They're not really painting.
> ...



Why?  Why did you have to come and ruin my thread and my day?


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## featherlite (Aug 13, 2015)

I thought this stopped awhile back.

...and it wasn't just the small low down shows...even the bigger name circus' were guilty of this. Its totally disgusting!! Those so called "trainers"  deserve to be stepped on.

I'm not even sure how I feel about zoos. Keeping wild animals captive for our amusement.
 At least they ( from what I know) make sure the animals are well cared for and have decent, reasonably appropriate habitats.


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## Luddly Neddite (Aug 24, 2015)

ChrisL said:


> Luddly Neddite said:
> 
> 
> > ChrisL
> ...




ChrisL

Are you serious?

I'm a lot more concerned about what is done to elephants than I am with 'ruining your thread and your day'. 

You said you love elephants ...


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## Luddly Neddite (Aug 24, 2015)

featherlite said:


> I thought this stopped awhile back.
> 
> ...and it wasn't just the small low down shows...even the bigger name circus' were guilty of this. Its totally disgusting!! Those so called "trainers"  deserve to be stepped on.
> 
> ...




No, actually they don't. 

Just like circuses, zoos are run for profit. They push for baby animals to be born because that's what people want to see. Many routinely sell to canned hunts and to individuals who want to own exotic animals.

If you do a search, you can find many broker sites, selling and trading excess zoo animals to the highest bidder.  Some animals are more common than others and go cheap. Others are hard to breed in captivity and go for big bucks. Not long ago, there was a big stink about a zoo that killed a giraffe in front of school children and fed it to other zoo animals. That goes on all the time. Its just that most zoos keep it quiet.

In the US, migratory birds are protected by federal laws. Exotic animals from other countries are not. Neither are indigenous mammals. 

Follow the money.


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## ChrisL (Aug 25, 2015)

featherlite said:


> I thought this stopped awhile back.
> 
> ...and it wasn't just the small low down shows...even the bigger name circus' were guilty of this. Its totally disgusting!! Those so called "trainers"  deserve to be stepped on.
> 
> ...



Ringling Bros recently stopped using elephants in their shows because of a video that was released by PETA about how cruel they are during the training process to the baby elephants.


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