Kaziranga, Nov 14: Two mahouts of the Kaziranga National Park and Tiger Reserve—Kasim Ali, working at the Kohora central range, and Sanjeev Pegu, engaged in the eastern range of Agaratoli—went to Lampang in Thailand recently and attended a three-day mahout training there to acquire knowledge on taming young elephant calves to be engaged for different purposes under the forest department. Interacting with this correspondent about their experiences, Kasim Ali said that the Thailand training model preferred the adoption of elephant-friendly measures while giving any training to elephants at a young stage. Ali said that through love and affection, young elephant calves are trained to listen to every command given by the mahouts. This made the calves comfortable while learning to obey the commands given.
Ali was of the view that the same technique could also be used in Assam while giving training to elephant calves.
However, a prominent elephant expert of the State, Prof. Kushal Sharma, explained that during the course of his more than 40 years of experience in dealing with elephants, including those of the wild species, he observed that the traditional method of giving training to Asian elephants in the State was found to be more fruitful.
"Our system of giving training to young elephant calves is free contact type, which means that the elephant was free to remain in contact with humans, especially its caretakers." Another factor is the kind of rope that is used to tie up the young elephant calves in Assam and West Bengal for training. It is made of jute, which does not cause much damage or injury to the skin of the animal, while Thailand and other European countries mostly use plastic or polymer-made ropes, which cause injury to the skin of the elephants while being tied up during the course of training. Normally, the carrot and stick method is used in the state where the elephant is rewarded by feeding with sugarcane or carrot if it listens to its mahout's instructions, and a stick is used if it disobeys any command.
The traditional method, which includes giving massage baths to elephants, has also proved to be much more useful, even though some small improvements were needed, said Prof. Sharma.
He added that in Europe and other countries, no contact or protected contact system of elephant training method is adopted, and the elephants are kept in cages.
By-
Correspondent
