Summary
Blanca Ojanguren, a 22-year-old Spanish tourist, was fatally attacked by an elephant at the Koh Yao Elephant Care sanctuary in Thailand while bathing the animal.
She was struck by its tusk, resulting in fatal injuries.
This tragedy highlights the risks of popular recreational activities involving elephants in Thailand.
It follows a recent fatal attack by a wild elephant on a Thai woman and adds to the 39 elephant-related deaths reported in 2024.
Most “sanctuaries” are more petting zoos than true sanctuaries.
The real sanctuaries have very strict rules about human/elephant interactions and do not have guests “bathing” elephants or even feeding elephants. Elephants are entirely capable of showering themselves. Forcing them to lie down and roll over to accommodate tourists showering them 3x a day is not part of their natural behavior.
Allowing them a comfortable and safe space to retire where they can be their natural selves is the goal of a real sanctuary. The rest of the places are petting zoos for the owners to enrich themselves under the guise of “altruistic elephant care”
Reading this thread is like a waterfall of ignorance and shitshow.
I’m no expert on animal husbandry, and in particular elephant sanctuaries, but I have recently been to one.
That being said, I’m sure there are elephant sanctuaries that treat their elephants bad, just as there are good ones. I can’t say which percentage of the sanctuaries are good/bad and I doubt any of the posters here can enlighten us on that.
What I can say is that these are NOT wild elephants. I was told there are roughly 12k wild elephants in Thailand.
These elephants are bought from farmers that are unable to sustain/feed the elephant from the work they are being used. Apparently it’s not uncommon to earn 500 Baht (ca 15 USD) a day as a farmer, and that is not enough to buy the 10% of body weight in food for the elephant. Elephants are often inhereted as they cost around 1 mill Baht (2,5 for baby).
So… Domesticated elephants can’t survive alone in the wild as they have been bred out some of the skills to manage on their own. So a mismanaged elephant is better off being sold off to a sanctuary that can care for it until it dies. Which is the purpose of sanctuaries - put an elephant out to pasture.
The sanctuary I visited only had female elephants and was but interested in breeding elephants - because they are not in it to add more domesticated elephants, but rescue elephants that need help. I’m sure other sanctuaries manage male elephants, I can’t say how they deal with mating and pregnancies in regards to rescue other elephants in need Vs “free elephant” for tourist trap.
TL;DR Post in this thread acts like domesticated elephants are a wild animal like a boar. It’s more like a cow that weighs 4-6 tonnes. Death by cow occurs every year, you don’t go screaming about that when it happens between your bites of hamburger. It’s of course horrible for the family of the poor girl being killed. Hopefully humans and elephants will get the treatment they need and deserve.
Anyone who doesn’t work with elephants professionally shouldn’t be close to them. They are big, smart and can hold a grudge. You don’t go and pet a lion or a bear, why would you go and pet an elephant?
Elephants have an image in popular culture as being ‘gentle giants’ - and the companies who can benefit from that image by offering elephant petting, bathing and other experiences have no reason to suggest it’s anything other than perfectly safe.
“Charismatic megafauna” are literally the poster-children for environmental movements because they look cool or cute and can hang in the public zeitgeist for a while. Downside is, yeah, we forget they’re wild animals.
One of the best things I was taught growing up was a deep love and appreciation for the natural world and that the best way to appreciate wildlife was from afar for both the safety of me and the animal.
Yeah, wild animals aren’t friends from childhood cartoons, they rarely are friendly.
It’s not that they’re rarely friendly … it’s that they’re wild animals that shouldn’t be required to be friendly.
Because they’re WILD animals.
You couldn’t pay me to get close to an elephant. They are huge. The “elephant ride” guys had what looked like a pick axe to beat them into submission and it didn’t phase them, like about how much you care about a fly landing on your arm.
I did as a kid, but in the US. Trying to remember if it was at the zoo or Marine World (now 6 flags Discovery Kingdom). It’s kinda wild in hindsight that it was a thing in the states. Just from a litigious standpoint, that’s gotta be super dangerous, and I was a kid on a field trip. I know for a fact my parents didn’t sign a waiver because they weren’t there. We also did tug o war with the elephant. Shocker, the elephant kicked our asses.
Tug of war was banned from the Olympics because it’s pretty dangerous (not against elephants, it was humans against humans).
Well, there is a pretty big difference between a carnivore/omnivore and a herbivore animal when it comes to how dangerous they are to other animals including humans.
But certainly not “safe” since they’re so huge, powerful and wild animals.
Large herbivores are usually extremely dangerous animals. They have to be able to fight off the carnivores.
And humans are carnivores. And it doesn’t matter if you’re vegan, the animal can’t tell.
Usually prey animals determine if another animal is a threat from the placement of their eyes. Front facing eyes usually mean the animal is built for hunting prey, and side-mounted eyes are for prey needing to keep aware of their surroundings.
We have front facing eyes so most animals immediately will register us as a threat.
Source? This sounds incredibly made up
It’s true. Maybe check on things before commenting.
https://www.nhstateparks.org/getmedia/e9e30fbf-fa20-4666-bd8b-83b7537641b9/Reading_a_skull_worksheet
I am not doubting that eye placement is a strong, but not decisive, indicator where the animal falls on the predator/prey divide. That is a very basic fact of zoology. I am doubting the claim that prey animals categorize non-native, and therefore unknown, species as a threat by this eye placement.
You just said it was made up and now you’re moving the goal posts. Stop.
“I don’t have to proof I’m right”
Yes you do
One of the most dangerous animals is a hippo…
“Most dangerous” is misleading. Yes, they appear on various top-ten lists if dangerous animals, and you should never approach one, but the annual deaths are only in the triple digits. Mosquitos and humans are a vastly bigger threat.
How many people encounter mosquitos Vs hippos?
That’s a good question but still not the whole story. It’s easy to avoid a hippo but damn near impossible to avoid mosquitos if they live in your climate.
Bison are also herbivores and there’s no way in hell I’m going to pet those things.
Ya, I’m not walking up to an elephant either.
My aunt owns a herd of Hyland cows (which have huge horns) and they are not aggressive at all but can accidentally hurt you with them.
Herbivores that have tusks or antlers rarely aren’t dangerous to humans (even domesticated like deers or cows), big herbivores even more so. Elphants are the animals that often kill other big animals for fun with their big tusks, you can look up elephant kills rhino for example.
Hippopotamus is one of the most dangerous animals in existence and it’s a herbivore.
My point was a response to the comment I replied to saying he didn’t understand why people would pet an elephant but not a lion or bear
Of course literally all large wild animals are dangerous and I wasn’t disputing that one bit!
Tell that to people encountering Moose.
People are scared of bears, and fail to realize a Moose will merc you just for looking at it wrong.
And once it has decided that, it doesn’t stop until you stop.
Looking at some lists of the most dangerous animals, most deaths seem to be a result of the animals spreading diseases or using venom. The only animal most people need to be worried about killing them using size and strength is another person.
I was just responding to the comment about why people would pet an elephant over a lion or bear.
If I was told I had to Walk into one of two rooms, both having completely wild animals, I’d pick the elephant over a lion or bear 100% of the time
In that case I’d agree with you. It seems like the only objective way to say how dangerous an animal is is to look at something like reported deaths, but you’d really want to divide those numbers by some measure of how frequently each animal encounters a human, and they data is not so readily available.
They treat those elephants horribly so tourists can come use them as a tourist attraction. Never go to one of them.
Not all “elephant experience” parks are the same. Some only have rescue animals, don’t use them for “shows”, segregate male animals from guests, and only allow interaction on the animal’s terms.
Similar to the difference between an accredited zoo and Joe Exotic.
These are huge animals and can mess a human up, intentionally or not. Not keeping some separation when dealing with them is inherently risky.
At this rate we need an Elephant Week.
We already have Darwin Awards
Elephants kill far more people every year than sharks do. Like, hundreds of people every year versus a dozen or so.
Meh. Rich person dies on their international vacation while using captive elephants for novelty.
I don’t have any sympathy for rich people who die doing expensive things. They could’ve saved lives with that money, but instead they use it to live as luxurious a life as possible.
And yes, globally speaking, this person
iswas rich.I found a little bit more info just for your awareness. It looks like she was studying at University in Spain, and was on a student exchange program living in Taiwan. She took a holiday trip from Taiwan, which a quick google search suggests can be as cheap as $80 in off season (i.e right now).
I don’t think it’s fair to assume she was rich even by global standards. The average individual or family can absolutely save money for an $80 flight for a weekend vacation. According to Statista, the global average take home (net income) is equal to $8700 per year. An $80 plane ticket would be a little less than 1% of said income. That is a substantial amount of money for a vacation for some people, but still not an insurmountable amount to save up for. Considering this, it’s more likely that she was enticed to take a weekend vacation by the low cost flight (but of course i don’t know if that is actually what happened).
As a side note, it is completely disingenuous to classify someone who might possibly be living in poverty in one country (under 14,580 per year in the USA, or 9535 euros in Spain, for example), of being rich on a global scale. Those kinds of comparisons are not helpful, as you cannot necessarily use your 14580 in the USA in a country where that income would be considered high income (in thailand, $20,000 per year is high income. Doesn’t quite overlap, but it’s surprisingly close). Everything costs more in a high income country, including the cost of emigrating from that country. A comparably lower income earner in thailand might be considered a middle class earner and be able to enjoy more vacations and more leisure than most Americans.
I will agree that elephant related tourism is a huge problem, but that’s a different discussion entirely.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/0/spanish-tourist-dies-after-attacked-by-elephant-thailand/
She was a 22 year old student. Nowhere does it mention her financial worth. It’s very likely she was there studying abroad and it was a subsidized trip. If not, vacations to Thailand are not prohibitively expensive. I’m certainly not rich and am squarely middle class, but my wife and I can afford to vacation there and it wouldn’t be close to the most expensive trip we’ve taken.
Your accusations are baseless and you’re just glad someone died because they died. Kinda gross.
Uhh, you’re assuming a lot without anything to back it up. Even if she was a student, her family is wealthy which is how she could afford this vacation.
If not, vacations to Thailand are not prohibitively expensive.
They are for the vast majority of people in the world.
Your accusations are baseless and you’re just glad someone died because they died. Kinda gross.
Yeah, no. This is completely false.
In short, you’re wrong and upset because I dared to criticize how someone wastes their money while children are starving. I see it all the time and I’ll see it again.
Gonna ignore you now. People like you are always desperate to defend their greed and entitlement, so you may have the last word. Goodbye.
You assumed far more than the person you responded to.
No, I didn’t.
It’s ~AUD$1200 (~US$750) return (~$590 per way, inc. checked bags) from Adelaide to Bangkok.
Pretty cheap if you’re not way up in Canada somewhere. For reference, Adelaide to Toronto is just over AUD$6000 return.
Canadian holidays are for the rich.
Edit: From Madrid to Bangkok return is ~AUD$1300 (~$650 per way) (via China Eastern Airways though…)
The vast majority of people cannot afford a $1300 flight for a vacation.
All you’re doing is highlighting how unaware you are about how poor most of the world is.
Dude we get it… You’re poor it’s ok
Yeah. You clearly don’t get it.
They are for the vast majority of people in the world.
That’s a bad argument. The average annual income for North America is the highest (57k$) followed by Europe (21k$). Combined they have about 1B people. The rest of the world has averages below 10k$, which means about 7B of the 8 billion earn that or lower on average. Take away fixed living costs of maybe 25-30% (probably more) and they are at ~650$/month, maybe 20% for food/drinks and other expenses and you’re already at ~325$/month.
Traveling to the next big city in my country is ~50€ single direction, which is not unpayable but could cut well into the budget for the vast majority of the world. So, sure, to the rest of the world North American and European are rich. Does that mean that they all deserve to die? Does being a European being rich in Asia mean they are rich at home?
The closer we get to the root of the problem, the more people we’ll find that contribute to it and the fewer we’ll find that are willing to admit it.
Good job defending your greed and entitlement. Nobody expected more from you.
Do tell me what the root of the problem is.
lol they attacked you personally for not hating people who… took at least one plane ride one time
Greed.
So a person born poor, middle class, rich or otherwise, in a wealthy country, but by virtue of being born in a wealth country richer than 7 billion other people, is the problem because they are greedy? Or how am I supposed to understand this?
You do not need to be rich to visit Thailand. Not saying that you particularly can afford it, but doing so is really a question of $2000 all included.
Globally speaking, yes you do.
A vacation to Thailand is prohibitively expensive for the vast majority of people.
According to some basic research, it looks like Thailand is actually in the top 10 for least expensive country to travel to.
If the claim is that vacationing anywhere is too expensive, then the argument is a little pedantic. That sounds like the perspective of someone who just saw a YouTube video comparing income by country, and now thinks they fully understand global poverty differences.
If the claim is that it really is too expensive to travel to Thailand specifically, it is simply incorrect. Thailand is one of absolute cheapest countries to travel to “globally.” Anyone in any country with enough money (and freedom of movement) for a vacation can travel to Thailand. Contrary to popular belief, this is based on comparative income, not global income. This means a lot of people can actually afford to travel to Thailand if they chose to. And, again, the person in question flew from Taiwan. Very cheap travel. (As a side note, this may be shocking, but some people take vacations when they cannot afford to.)
On average, a person in the USA who is homeless earns less than 50,000 per year. While, yes, 50k is a lot of money “globally,” someone earning that much money in the USA may not be able to afford a home in their own country. That’s why these kinds of comparisons are not helpful. You might as well call anyone who has ever lived or died “oxygen rich” because, universally speaking, dead or alive they have good oxygen levels compared to entire planets with no oxygen. It’s a useless statement.
One final thought is paid vacation days. The USA is at the bottom globally of mandatory paid vacation days. Countries that may surprise you will actually pay you your salary while you travel for vacation, and you better believe they do travel.
So, globally speaking, no you don’t.
https://en.tempo.co/read/1914697/top-10-cheapest-countries-to-visit-adventure-with-less-expense
https://www.kiplinger.com/personal-finance/spending/cheapest-countries-to-travel-to
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/mapped-which-countries-get-the-most-paid-vacation-days/
The fact remains that a vacation to Thailand is prohibitively expensive for the vast majority of people.
You just don’t want to acknowledge how you live in a world of privilege at the expense of those who don’t.
It’s okay, I see it all the time and I don’t expect any more of you at this point.
Clearly you didn’t even read anything i wrote. I’ll still give you the courtesy of a thought out reply, knowing you won’t do the same, though i am wondering if I’m talking to a bot
You’re not providing any facts or information, just stating an uninformed opinion. It’s a very disingenuous take, and is not useful in any way shape or form. It’s actually somewhat dangerous, and also belittles people of other cultures. I don’t know why you think you’re trying to act like a white knight for people you consider to be foreigners, but they’re actually better off than you think they are. I’m guessing you must think you’re better than everyone else. I am curious which YouTube video you saw that made you think you know so much about global disposable income levels per capita, though at this point i think you’re just making things up as you go.
I’ve provided you with actual information and your response is no everyone else is wrong. Clearly you prefer taking bad faith arguments with strangers for fun. I hope you find out one day why this is the wrong way to behave
You also have no idea where i live, what i do, who i am, where I’ve been. I promise you that all your assumptions are wrong.
As i wrote this out i realized that i am probably talking to a bot
Prohibitively expensive especially for a 22 year old.
I could put a round trip to Thailand on any one of multiple credit cards NOW, but at 22? Yeah, no.
Once you’re there, US dollars go a long way, but GETTING there is the trick. Round trip right now from here is $1,100.
