A: Yes—but only with care, competence, and transparency.
In traditional elephant management systems known as free contact, mahouts use a tool called a hook (also known as a bullhook, ankus, or goad) to guide and communicate with elephants. This tool is long enough to touch areas of an elephant’s body that are otherwise inaccessible and is used during routine care (such as foot cleaning, medical inspections, and bathing), as well as during rare emergencies when a panicked elephant could pose a threat to people or itself.
When used correctly, the hook is not a weapon. It is a communication tool, similar in function to reins with a horse or a shepherd’s crook—an extension of the mahout’s hand, guided by deep familiarity with the elephant’s physical and emotional responses. Mahouts are trained to avoid sensitive areas and to use the hook primarily as a signal or touch-point, not as an instrument of force. The real harm comes not from the hook itself, but from the way it is used—and from management systems that lack oversight, accountability, or authentic relationships between humans and elephants.
Improper use—such as beating, stabbing, or punishing—represents a failure of care, skill, and ethics, and should not be tolerated. However, banning the hook entirely, without understanding what replaces it, can lead to even worse outcomes: the use of hidden knives, sharpened sticks, or psychological coercion invisible to observers. In some cases, hooks are banned to appease international audiences, yet replaced by more harmful tools that escape public scrutiny.
This raises important questions—not only about what tools are used, but why, by whom, and according to which ethical frameworks. The debate over hooks is not just about elephants. It is about how power over animals is exercised, justified, and contested in a global field of tourism ethics.
1. Animal Welfare: A Question of Use, Not Symbolism
From an animal welfare perspective, the focus is on outcomes: is the elephant healthy, mentally stimulated, well-fed, and safe? Welfare frameworks evaluate not the mere presence or absence of tools like hooks, but whether their use contributes to—or undermines—an animal’s physical and psychological well-being.
Proper use of the hook is consistent with welfare goals when it supports non-invasive medical care, prevents emergency escalation, or enables trust-based routines. The key issue is not the hook itself, but how it’s wielded, under what kind of supervision, and within what kind of relationship. Importantly, welfare advocates warn that international pressure to eliminate hooks can sometimes result in the opposite of their intended effect—forcing handlers to use concealed or dangerous substitutes, or creating anxiety for elephants that are no longer guided through familiar cues.
The welfare approach calls for training, regulation, and transparency, not symbolic bans.
2. Animal Rights: A Symbol of Power and Exploitation
From an animal rights perspective, the issue is not just how the hook is used—it is that it is used at all. For rights-based ethicists, the very existence of such a tool signals a structural relationship of domination. The hook becomes a symbol of subjugation, a material expression of human authority over a sentient being who has not consented to its role in tourism.
In this view, even gentle use can represent a moral wrong, because it is grounded in unequal power and enforced participation. Animal rights activists argue that elephants should not be made to perform, carry tourists, or comply with human routines—because doing so denies them autonomy and dignity. The hook is not a neutral tool, but part of a system of captivity and coercion that treats elephants as means to human ends.
Hence, rights advocates push for bans—not just of hooks, but of elephant riding, bathing, and performance altogether. For them, the goal is not better management, but liberation.
This perspective has significant global influence, especially through viral media, Western tourism trends, and international NGO lobbying. Yet it often overlooks or misunderstands local contexts, where elephant–human relationships are grounded in mutual familiarity, cultural history, and interdependence.
3. Mahouts: Touch, Trust, and Embodied Knowledge
In contrast, the ethics of care—as practiced by many Lao and Southeast Asian mahouts—sees the hook not as a symbol of domination, but as one element of a relational system of care. A skilled mahout knows his elephant intimately: her moods, her signals, her rhythms. The hook is an extension of this relationship, used sparingly, gently, and with respect.
This approach does not deny the presence of power. But it insists that power, in the context of multispecies care, can be responsible, negotiated, and situated. The ethics of care is not about removing all control, but about exercising it with accountability and compassion, rooted in daily routines and lifelong bonds.
Importantly, this perspective also challenges the binary logic that tools = violence. In Lao culture, touch is not inherently violent. Physical closeness, shared labor, and even forms of light discipline are part of a living tradition of working with elephants—not to exploit them, but to live alongside them, often over decades.
Banning hooks without understanding this system can result in epistemic violence: the erasure of local knowledge, the invalidation of mahout skill, and the imposition of foreign values that may not lead to better outcomes for elephants.
Conclusion: The Real Ethical Question
Should elephants be guided with hooks? The ethical answer depends not just on the tool, but on the context, relationship, and intent.
- From a welfare view, the hook is ethically acceptable when used skillfully and for care-related purposes.
- From a rights view, the hook is unacceptable—regardless of technique—because it represents domination.
- From a Mahouts perspective, the hook is not the problem; the absence of trust and understanding is.
Ultimately, the question should not be “Is the hook ethical?” but “How do we build ethical relationships with elephants at all?”
This means investing in mahout training, transparency, cultural respect, and open dialogue—rather than banning tools in response to optics or ideology. It means learning to see not just the hook, but the hand that holds it—and the life it touches.
Ethics, like care, is never abstract. It is daily, embodied, and relational. And in the world of elephants, it begins not by condemning what we see—but by understanding what we don’t.
