[5] Q: How are elephants trained to interact with humans?

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Dr. Anya Sharma: An Animal Welfare Scholar
Mr. David Chen: An Animal Rights Activist
Uncle Kham: A Veteran Laotian Mahout from Manifa Elephant Camp

Moderator: Let’s address another fundamental question: How are elephants trained to interact with humans, and how can we approach the ethics of this practice? Dr. Sharma, could you begin?

Dr. Anya Sharma: Certainly. First, it’s important to state that some form of training or habituation is necessary for any elephant living in close proximity to humans, whether for tourism or even routine medical care. Without some level of learned response, close interaction would be unsafe for everyone involved. From an animal welfare perspective, the crucial question is not whether elephants are trained, but how the training is conducted. Today, with most elephants in tourism being born in captivity, we’re seeing a significant shift away from the old, coercive “breaking-in” methods. Modern, welfare-oriented camps increasingly use positive reinforcement techniques, like target training or clicker-based conditioning, where elephants learn to respond to verbal or visual cues for rewards. This is incredibly valuable for enabling voluntary cooperation with veterinary care—like lifting a foot for an inspection or allowing an injection—which can reduce stress and the need for sedation. Ethical training is gradual, non-punitive, and builds trust.

Mr. David Chen: And yet, from an animal rights perspective, the method is secondary to what the act represents. Any form of training, whether you call it “gentle” or not, rests on the assumption that animals exist to serve human goals. It’s an act of conditioning that limits an animal’s autonomy for a human-defined purpose. Therefore, we see it as a moral violation. This view is deeply sensitive to the history of training, which is rooted in violence. The historical phajaan or “crush” method, used to break a wild elephant’s spirit, is a paradigm of the coercion embedded in this relationship. Even if those methods are rare now, the memory of that violence rightly informs our critique. The core problem is captivity itself. If elephants weren’t kept in camps, there would be no need for training. Our goal is not to improve training techniques but to end the system that makes training necessary.

Uncle Kham: (Listens patiently, his hands resting on his knees) My father taught me, and his father taught him. For us, here in Laos, what you call “training” is a… a spiritual process, a promise between the mahout and the young elephant. It is not about “breaking” a spirit. It is about inviting a new spirit into a shared life. When a calf is old enough, three or four years, still with its mother nearby, a respected elder—never a young man—will begin the process with ceremonies. We ask the forest spirits for protection. The young one is placed in a corral, not to be crushed, but to gently transition. We stay by its side for days, for weeks. We sing to it, we feed it our best tamarind, we calm it with our voice and our touch. We slowly introduce words, signals. It is not one-sided. The mahout must also learn the elephant’s language: its fears, its joys, its silences.

Dr. Anya Sharma: What Uncle Kham is describing is profoundly important, and it aligns with what some thinkers, like Donna Haraway, call “becoming-with.” She reframes training not as one-sided domination, but as an ethical encounter, an effort to communicate across species lines where both parties are changed in the process of learning to live together. Ethnographers have documented similar relational practices among Karen and Lao communities. This isn’t the coercive model that rightly draws condemnation. It’s a form of embodied knowledge, rooted in generations of cohabitation where elephants are seen as companions, kin, even moral persons. To collapse all forms of training into the single category of “abuse,” as some narratives do, is to commit a kind of epistemic violence—it erases the existence of these deep, culturally specific relational practices.

Mr. David Chen: But Dr. Sharma, even in this “relational” model, a power imbalance is undeniable. The elephant does not choose to enter this relationship. The human initiates it for human purposes, even if those purposes include companionship and care. The system itself is still one of control, however benevolent it may appear. The hook, the commands, the corral—these are all tools of that control.

Uncle Kham: There is power, yes. An elephant is powerful. A mahout has responsibility, which is also a kind of power. But in our way, that power should be used with compassion and accountability, within a lifelong bond. It is not about removing all guidance, but exercising it with a good heart. Touch is not always violence. When my elephant trusts me, my touch with my hand, or even a gentle guide with the khor (hook), is a conversation. It is not an attack. The absence of trust is what creates harm, not the tool itself.

Dr. Anya Sharma: And this is where the welfare perspective intersects with Uncle Kham’s ethics of care. The key issue is not the tool itself, but how it’s wielded, under what supervision, and within what kind of relationship. International pressure to ban tools like hooks can, paradoxically, lead to worse welfare if handlers resort to concealed, sharper tools or methods that cause psychological harm without leaving visible marks. The focus should be on fostering expertise, transparency, and authentic, trusting relationships, rather than symbolic bans that might make us feel better but don’t actually improve the elephant’s life.

Moderator: This suggests the central question is not as simple as we might think.

Dr. Anya Sharma: Exactly. The ethical answer depends entirely on the context, relationship, and intent. We must move beyond asking “Is the hook ethical?” to asking, “How do we build ethical relationships with elephants in the first place?” That means investing in mahout training, cultural respect, and open dialogue, not just reacting to optics. We need to learn to see not just the tool, but the hand that holds it, and the life it touches.

Uncle Kham: Training is not the end of freedom. For us, it is the beginning of a shared life. A life that is sometimes messy, not always easy, but it is a life together.

Mr. David Chen: A shared life that one party is compelled to live. For us, the ethical work remains focused on creating a world where that compulsion is no longer necessary, and a truly free life is possible for every elephant.

Dr. Anya Sharma: And until that ideal is reached, or if we accept that other forms of interspecies life are also valid, our duty is to “stay with the trouble,” as Haraway would say. We must refuse simple answers, acknowledge the complexities, and support training that serves as a site of genuine ethical encounter, not ethical compromise.

[6] Q: Should elephants working in camps be reintroduced into the wild?

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