People riding an elephant attacked by rhino

On Assignment: Kaziranga 2008 from gabe deloach on Vimeo.

The rhino's mouth is scary.

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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Anonymous

Too bad today’s video formats and controls suck so bad. At least in QuickTime you had frame-by-frame advance capabilities with the simplest players, so you could see a single frame if you wanted.
Anonymous

delightful creatures?
floraldeoderant

I love the shot of the four guys, glowering judgmentally, with their hands on their hips.

“Aww, come ON. What happened? Wait, you WHAT? You LOST THE GUN? What the hell, you guys? What the hell?”
apoxia

Those men are lucky they didn’t fall off or they would have been rhino chow.

I agree with singingdragon: poor elephant :(
- jerwin
  
  Rhino chow? Rhinos are herbivores. The men wouldn’t be eaten, though perhaps their gored bodies would feed scavengers.
  
  Ironically, the men were on a anti-poaching patrol–defending the rhinos from the ravages of “traditional medicine.” But given that the rhino is wild, such charges are to be expected.
Muse

I feel sorry for the elephant. They are lucky that rhino didn’t have a larger, sharper horn. That could have been a whole lot worse. I have only seen rhinos in zoos and they can move at a shockingly fast pace for such large animals.

I have to add the fact that the babies are as cute as the adults are scary:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOFJSzUzjfs
Anonymous

Why didn’t they just take away his credit card?
caipirina

I am so glad I am seeing this AFTER I went to Nepal and we spotted a tiger from our elephant!
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  Where were you? I was at Royal Chitwan.
  
  We rode elephants right through herds of rhino and they paid no attention. The rhino were not more than a foot or two away, including the babies. It was a bit scarier getting off the elephant and watching the rhino from behind a clump of reeds. And the insects were much scarier than any of the mammals.
  - caipirina
    
    Antinous: Yep, also Royal Chitwan (Tiger Jungle Lodge) … the rhinos we saw were all harmless and just looked at us … but we had a scary encounter with a ‘rogue’ male elephant, who had taken a liking to one of the elephant ladies … and sure enough, last morning on our successful tiger spotting trip, he showed up and started chasing us! … That was kinda scary and IF i have any video of that, it would be super shaky cam …
    
    From the faces of the elephant drivers I could clearly see that this was not a joke and we finally got rid of him by bringing that one lady-phant back (and Romeo kept following) and the rest of us were safe …
    - Antinous / Moderator
      
      I took the challenge to get on the elephant the traditional way by tugging on its ears and climbing up its curled trunk. Unfortunately, I got stuck halfway up, hanging off its face.
      
      No scary animals on my trip, except the drunk, muscle-bound, Australian cowherdess who relieved my 30 year-old companion of his virginity.
Major Variola (ret)

1. Give the elephant some beer, or sugarcane.

2. This does not appear to be the first time this has happened to the elephant or his drivers, just to the videographers :-)

3. Falling off the elephant would have been very bad for multiple reasons, including elephant stamping.
apoxia

Point taken re herbivourousness.
alllie

Lucky it wasn’t that tiger who attacks helicopters and elephants.
- millrick
  
  “attacking tiger? no worries, i’ll just fend it off with this little stick.”
Mitch

Someone very slick should create a lot hype about the horn of a domestic animal, like water buffalo, being superior to rhino horn for traditional medicine. They could pay off some traditional medicine practitioners to endorse it. Is there a Chinese Kevin Trudeau? It doesn’t matter if it doesn’t work. Rhino horn doesn’t work.
millrick

i imagine the elephant was momentarily debating the morality of dumping the howdah and running home on its own versus loyalty to its mahout
jaytkay

Note to self: It’s good to have an elephant on your side in a fight.
Anonymous

Anyone else see the ‘driver’ guy clubbing the elephant on the trunk twice after with the pointy part of the stick? What’s up with that? :(
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  That, unfortunately, is a common method for training and wrangling elephants.
- rebdav
  
  When I was A kid I asked the zoo keeper why they used that pointy stick when leading the elephants. He said that the elephants have something like an inch of leather that is about as tough as wood, the point is needed to get their attention in a nudge like way that wouldn’t require beating on them with full force. Not sure if that guy was just working a college part time job leading the elephant train or actually knew what he was talking about.
  - Kosmoid
    
    I could never understand the appeal of the circus were they have elephants or other animals “perform.” It’s as if we should be honored that they can mimic humans in the slightest way, but you don’t see the cruelty in forcing this behavior on them.
- CuttingOgres
  
  You wouldn’t believe how tough the flies are out there.
irksome

“The MOUTH is scary”?

Yeah, and the fact that it’s essentially an enraged 2-ton stomping machine is a walk in the park.
Anonymous

Don’t fuck with Tigers, period…
now just imagine if these were laser tigers…
lewis stoole

the one instance where a unicorn chaser will cause ptsd
max

is that elephant missing a tusk?
Nawel

Poor elephant, really. In the last part he seems to be thinking: “I’m too old for this shit…”
- Mike Harris
  
  ” … and I’m just two days away from retirement.”
robcat2075

Worst amusement park ride ever.
Anonymous

I’ve ridden on an elephant and I’ve hand fed a rhino. I think the rhino was young and curious. Their teeth are made for grazing and they don’t have very many. The guide that was with us put his hand in the rhinos mouth to retrieve a plastic film container that someone dropped. Elephants are smart and have an independent streak. It’s a bumpy ride when they walk, I can’t imagine trying to hold on when they are running. They are lucky they didn’t get dumped. Moral of my comment: animals are unpredictable!
Chentzilla

Blair Witch Kaziranga.
funchy

You know who is scary? Those idiot people. They use the elephant for transportation. They carry weapons to gun down other wildlife. When they force the elephant to enter the agitated rhino’s area, they BEAT the poor elephant over the head with a bullhook for doing whatever it did to protect itself. They can afford to take tourists around on rides, but the tourists can’t pay enough so they can afford a swamp buggy?

News flash: you don’t need a “pointy stick” to communicate with an elephant. Killer whales are on the same scale, and they’re trained with rewards and tweets of a whistle. The same is done for zoo elephants. While I understand some people are still ignorant there is a better way, the outside world should shun them and refuse to patronize them.
- jerwin
  
  You’re easily scared. Here’s a 2007 UNESCO report explaining why elephants are used
- Cynical
  
  Yeh, you’re right. We should totally leave the game reserves to the poachers because it’s inhumane to ride an elephant.
  
  Just once I’d like to see an article like this without the usual bleeding heart “oh won’t somebody please think of the animals?” comments. They *are* thinking of the animals, that’s why they’re there. Someone can dedicate their whole life to protecting these creatures and yet animal rights nuts will never be happy. I bet those shoes are probably leather too, and *ohmygod* I’ve just realised there’s a chance that some of the people in the video might not even be vegan! The savages!
singingdragon

Poor elephant :(
moop2000

You can see a better quality version of the video here:
http://vimeo.com/10923770
- jerwin
  
  Thanks for the vimeo link. I prefer it when moments of abject terror aren’t obscured by artifacts. The flailing of the camera is sufficient.
  
  One of the men seems to be sporting a wooden finger. Occupational hazard?
- Mark Frauenfelder
  
  Donkey shorn!
Anonymous

I feel the same way when I see camo Hi-Tops.