In the village communities of Laos, elephants are not managed through distant control or standardized protocol. They are lived with—cared for, known by name, and treated as members of an extended social and spiritual community. This is not romanticism, but a mode of multispecies coexistence built on long histories of shared labor, mutual dependence, and intimate forms of knowledge. As ethnographer Nicolas Lainé documents, elephant health in this context is not a matter of biomedicine alone—it is a holistic, relational, and spiritually informed process.
In Western discourses on animal welfare, the health of elephants is often evaluated in terms of observable physiological conditions: foot lesions, body weight, workload, stress hormones. These are valid concerns, especially in poorly regulated tourist camps. But they are not the only ways health is understood. In the villages of Laos, healing emerges through the careful attention of humans who live alongside elephants, who notice changes in posture or appetite, and who have access to a vast pharmacopoeia of forest-based remedies—ethnoveterinary medicine rooted in generations of observation, experience, and co-presence.
Healing Through Relationship
According to Lainé (2020), healing an elephant begins not with diagnosis in the biomedical sense, but with noticing. A mahout may observe that the elephant has trouble walking, refuses food, or seems withdrawn. Such signs are not isolated from the animal’s social or spiritual life—they are interpreted within the broader field of relationships: with humans, with spirits, and with the landscape itself. Mahouts frequently say that “the elephant has lost its mind” (mot lathi) when it behaves erratically, a phrase that indicates both physical discomfort and emotional disorientation.
Here, healing is not merely a technical intervention—it is a process of re-establishing balance in a web of relations. Remedies may include compresses made from leaves, bark, or roots known to relieve swelling or infection. Some plants are burned and the smoke wafted over the elephant; others are infused and poured onto wounds or ingested. One example is the use of kheua hem (a vine) and phak van (a leafy plant), locally known for their antiseptic and anti-inflammatory properties. The application of such treatments depends not only on the symptoms but on the personal history of the elephant and its relationship with the caregiver.
As Lainé notes, knowledge of these remedies is not stored in written texts or laboratories, but in the memories and practices of mahouts, elders, and ritual specialists. It is transmitted orally, often within families, and tied to the spiritual landscape—the places where certain plants grow, the rituals that must accompany their use, and the spirits who must be appeased during healing. Healing thus takes place across domains: physical, emotional, spiritual, ecological.
Situated Knowledge and Relational Ethics
This approach reflects what Donna Haraway calls “situated knowledge”—forms of knowing that are partial, embodied, and shaped by lived relationships. In When Species Meet, Haraway argues that understanding animals does not come from abstraction or detached observation, but from the shared touch, gaze, and rhythms of cohabitation. It is in the slow, mutual process of “becoming with” that ethical care is born.
In Laos, ethnoveterinary knowledge is an example of this kind of situated, relational epistemology. Mahouts know their elephants not through quantitative measures alone, but through a long history of co-living: feeding, bathing, walking, working, watching. They know what an elephant’s “normal” looks like not statistically, but personally. They also know when something is wrong—not just physically, but spiritually. In many cases, illness is understood as a disturbance in the animal’s relationship with its guardian spirit (phi), and healing may involve both plant-based medicine and ritual offerings.
The Problem with Welfare Universalism
Such relational healing practices are often devalued—or outright dismissed—by international organizations promoting animal welfare. These organizations, often headquartered in the Global North, emphasize standardized assessments and biomedical protocols. While these frameworks can identify important health issues, they frequently exclude or marginalize local knowledge systems that do not conform to Western scientific norms.
This exclusion has real consequences. As Lainé notes, many mahouts and elephant owners are reluctant to share their practices with outsiders, fearing judgment or accusation of abuse. The dominance of Western welfare standards creates a knowledge hierarchy in which local caregivers are treated as backward or unscientific, despite their deep practical experience and ethical investment in elephant wellbeing.
Haraway’s work helps us understand what is lost in this epistemic narrowing. If we only recognize animal health through universal metrics, we risk erasing the very relationships that sustain ethical care. What if healing means more than measurable recovery? What if it means rebuilding trust, rebalancing spiritual relations, or restoring the elephant’s place in a network of human and nonhuman actors?
Toward a Plural Ethics of Elephant Health
To move forward, we must reject the false binary between tradition and science, and instead support a plural ethics that respects diverse ways of knowing and caring. Ethnoveterinary medicine, as practiced in Laos, is not a relic of the past—it is a living, adaptive system grounded in observation, experimentation, and long-term cohabitation. It deserves not just documentation, but recognition as a valid form of multispecies care.
This also means rethinking what counts as “ethical.” Rather than imposing abstract welfare norms from afar, we need to ask:
- How is health understood by those who live with elephants?
- What relationships are necessary for elephants to thrive?
- And how can international support enhance, rather than replace, these situated practices?
In the end, the health of elephants in Laos is not just about preventing disease. It is about sustaining relationships—between elephant and human, forest and village, knowledge and ritual. Healing is not just what is done to elephants, but what is done with them, in a shared world of care, attention, and multispecies respect.
