Riding elephants » Australia Zoo

05-09-2008

That argument I can live with - visitor safety is rather important ... all it takes is for one of the normally placid elephants to get spooked one day and a visitor gets hurt. Then the zoo is facing all sorts of legal issues as well as attacks from the animal libbers.

05-09-2008

Not to mention there would be some issues with there zoo permitting regarding riding elephants, but i spose cash will always get around that.

05-09-2008

As a kid I had a lot of elephant rides at Taronga - it was one of the highlights of a visit. (Had a few at Melbourne zoo too.) On busy days Taronga had two elephants going at once.

When I look back now at the old photos it makes my blood run cold; there wasn't so much as a hand-rail between the public (in large numbers) and the elephant walk/track. At times the elephants had to slow down or stop while people got out of the way. In modern times it would be a nightmare insurance situation, and yet I can't recall an accident ever occurring.

The only drawback was that I always seemed to be the last kid to get on and so I was at the back of the howdah. As she plodded along, the old ele. would flick her tail up. If she got you across the head it was like being whipped with wire!

06-09-2008

One would have thought there had been enough ammunition with importing the elephants in the first place...

06-09-2008

That's an great point to put out there, munipulation and misuse of the animals, can spark obviously even more protests then aquiring the animals,

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