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[ti:Training Elephants]
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[00:00.60]Lesson 41
[00:02.75]Training elephants
[00:10.54]At what point does the training of a captive wild elephant begin?
[00:17.74]Two main techniques have been used for training elephants, which we may call respectively the tough and the gentle.
[00:27.25]The former method simply consists of setting an elephant to work and beating him until he does what is expected of him.
[00:36.67]Apart from any moral considerations this is a stupid method of training,
[00:42.29]for it produces a resentful animal who at a later stage may well turn man-killer.
[00:49.31]The gentle method requires more patience in the early stages,
[00:53.72]but produce a cheerful good-tempered elephant who will give many years of loyal service.
[01:01.86]The first essential in elephant training is to assign to the animal a single mahout who will be entirely responsible for the job.
[01:12.02]Elephants like to have one master just as dogs do, and are capable of a considerable degree of personal affection.
[01:21.71]There are even stories of half-trained elephant calves who have refused to feed and pined to death
[01:30.54]when by some unavoidable circumstance they have been deprived of their own trainer.
[01:38.41]Such extreme cases must probably be taken with a grain of salt,
[01:43.26]but they do underline the general principle that the relationship between elephant and mahout is the key to successful training.